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0-425-05194-3 - $2.25 - BERKLEY SCIENCE FICTION

Second in the Astounding New Action Series

about the Most Dangerous
Supercriminals in the Universe
 THE CABAL
The most dangerous supercriminals in the
Universe

VANDAL (Alien) Expert audio tracker, speaks

62 languages; wanted for usual crimes: con-
spiracy, murder, robbery of lunar shuttle. . .

PINBALL Olympic wrestler and brilliant tac-

tician with a taste for nuns. 8 known wives, 64
offspring. Wanted for usual crimes plus matri-
monial offenses.

ROATAX (Female) Interolympics champion

and former legal adviser to INFED. Abnormal
sexual capacity with nympho-hypernormia.
Wanted for rape and suspected cannibalism, plus
usual crimes, Executioner to CABAL.

FACTION Weight-lifter and intero-wing space

Master. Wanted for usual crimes plus in-space
“*time deck’’ observance. 1 daughter, Holly.

~ WEEKOLD Interolympic athlete, political sub-

versive. Wanted for usual crimes, plus profligacy.
Berkley books in THE CABAL series
by Philip Dunn

THE CABAL
THE BLACK MOON
 €»
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
 This Berkley book contains the complete
text of the original edition.
It has been completely reset in a type face
designed for easy reading, and was printed
from new film.

THE BLACK MOON

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with

Transworld Publishers Ltd.

PRINTING HISTORY
Corgi edition published 1978
Berkley edition / May 1982

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1978 by Philip Dunn.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Transworld Publishers Ltd.,
Century House, 61-63 Uxbridge Road
Ealing, London W5_ 5SA.

ISBN: 0-425-05194-3

A BERKLEY BOOK® T 757,375

Berkley Books are published by Berkley Publishing Corporation, —
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name ‘‘BERKLEY”’ and the stylized ‘‘B’’ with design
are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 CHAPTER ONE _

The Setcon

The boy was fifteen years and eight months old,

by the reckoning of the Mandroid. His face was
pure white, his hair blond and his body whole. His
eyes shone a clear blue, a little too light to be con-
_ vincing, but dark enough to be much loved by his
women. The irises were whiter than his skin,
sheened and without blood shot. His lips were full
and pink and his small, still developing chest was
thin, showing ribs.He wore nothing; felt no worry
at this, standing with his long thin arms down at
his sides, his head tilted up, chin forward, the
whole frame bereft of dignity, medical and disin-
fected.
His buttocks were tight though, and the general
pallor of his features faint and translucent. He
was very frightened. He twitched only his toes as
he stood before the heavy glass screen. Now and

1
2 CABAL: Volume 2

again a thumb would start to turn backwards,

ready to stretch, but it would hesitate and return
to stillness, never having moved. His eyes did not
observe the track of the light that shone, fluore-
scent around the glass, moving like an evil hunter,
looking for a weakness to strike first. The beam
was smooth and unhesitating in its search and the
boy’s eyes did not observe it. He did not listen to
the thin buzzing that filled the air around his head, .
the sound that burrowed into his ears, finely in-
sinuating its cause and pronouncing its effect in a
sonic code he understood well enough. The sound
was cool, streamlined and he did not listen to it.
He did not sniff the smell that drifted around
his soft, young nose; the smell that he knew would
soon pull him through his conscious life into a
world he did not understand, nor wish to enter; a
world he had no possible way of avoiding, or
really, if the truth be known, ever entering com-
pletely. He would not go there as he was now,
though he would leave this place as such. He
would not arrive there with any hope and he
would never return. The acrid disinfectant smell
that hung over the whole laboratory was most
pungent here, but he did not smell it. For this was
the SETcon.
The light on the screen settled at last, around
the slim abdomen. This was the part it very often |
selected first, the most vulnerable part for the
Cancer. The softest, sweetest meat. There was a
warmth. He felt it grow through a pleasant gen-
tleness like the caress of a lover, then out of soft-
ness into humidity and discomfort. He thought.
Thinking was a great help to him. They taught him
to think, the positive feedback that broadened the —
shaAT
 THE BLACK MOON 3

pain and spread it over layers of consideration.

The rapid breathing control; ‘‘always control the
initial pains before the ‘applicants’ take over and
you will benefit from the SETcon.’’ And so he
breathed and thought and breathed and thought.
His thoughts grew shorter and then his breaths un-
til there was no time between breaths to think, so
he began to sing.
They taught him that too. He had to have his ©
song, a tune he knew well; one perhaps, which his
foster had given him as a baby. Sing it. Sing it
quickly, between your lips, hiss it if you can’t get
the notes out, spit it. As fast as you need to
breathe, so sing the song. It will help and you may
be sure that at the end of your song will come the
applicants’ relief. At the end of your song will
come the end of your youth, your life. And so it
was; the SETcon was.
As the wide, strain-shot eyes closed, his body
was gently swung backwards from the standing
position. The move neatly coincided with his fall
into unconsciousness, and his body did not slide,
but lay back, silently.
The scanning light screen rose silently up and ~
away from his body, its task complete. The
diagnosis was made and so the operations could
begin. The cancer, in its anger, had screamed and
been subdued by the applicants, beaten now.
The SETcon operation was the shortest part of
the procedure. Making the transformation took
all of three hours. The recovery and rehabilitation
might take several months.
The boy’s body lay on a cool slab, made from a
_ soft natural fiber which molded to him just
enough. The needles started from the head, bear-
4 CABAL: Volume2
ing down upon the body from above. There was a
moment’s hesitation while the needles received the
data concerning the present subject and then the
slab began to move.
Two doors swung back to welcome the inert
body into the SETcon tunnel. The needles, thir-
teen thousand of them, were poised and ready. A
fine mist of decontaminant was passed over the
operative and its color changed through blue and
green as the chemicals mixed. Once within the
opening the needles began to work on the head.
The skin was stripped from the skull, taking the
thick golden hair too. As his body went deeper
into the tunnel, every inch would be ‘‘turned’’.
The skull was retained, as in all cases, but the bone
was infused with a hardening preservative that
would make it virtually everlasting. The brain,
too, was injected with a mild chemical though not
to preserve, rather, conversely, to destroy it once
its time was completed. The Mandroids did not
like to leave their dead walking around carrying
putrefying tissue. Somehow, even when they had
dropped the ‘‘M”’’ and were banished through The
Wall, there was no necessity to make them suffer
more than necessary.
The face lost all its skin and flesh. All human,
living tissue was removed and the various organs
too. All, that is, excepting one eye. Before the
SETcon needles had reached the nose area and —
removed it the right eye was encased in reinforced
plastic, the plastic framed in steel and the whole
attached to the synthetic fiber framework of the
head case, which was being lowered over the
flayed skull. The head lifted delicately from the
slab by small pressured facelifts under the cranium
 \

THE BLACK Moon 5

and the casing snapped to at the back, then sealed

and depressured. Meanwhile the needles were
stripping everything else. Within one hour there
would be nothing left at all.
As the human frame vanished under the SET-
con so it was replaced. Fibers, coagulators, pacers
with far greater efficiency than the original dying
tissue of the sixteen year old were built up into a
complex, finely developed, automated, motorized
body structure. Two ‘‘hearts’’ instead of one,
filters instead of livers and kidneys, a spare brain-
positron unit to adjust mental instability, off-
setting ‘‘humanidy’’ with pure logic. Muscles were
killed and fine electronic sinews installed, the
stomach removed altogether, all excretory organs
had become unnecessary, the subject would not
need to eat. The penis was cut off and thrown
away while the sperm-producing organs retained
for experimentation.
Those parts which had been attacked and eaten
away by the cancer were dematerialized even
before the needles got to them. Such was the dread
and horror of the Mandroid for his cancer.
Once the internal ‘‘scaffolding’’ had been built
up with all the detailed structure so came the
‘‘skin’’. This was a fibrous coating, strong and
flexible which was poured over the body and
molded to the exact shape, then dried instantly. A
panel of ‘‘flexalloy’’ molded to the shape of the
Mandroid was positioned over the vital area of the
chest where the androidal brain rested, forming a
tough breastplate. On the belly lay a further plate,
this time impregnated by chemical etching with the
_ finger seal of the Mandroid who carried it. This
was in turn attached to the internal mechanisms of
6 CABAL: Volume 2

the body through the ESP, the human brain’s

ESP. If anything went drastically wrong, the Man- |
droid could manipulate this panel with the tips of
his fingers, find the fault and adjust it. Also on
this plate, as a second ‘‘see safe’’ control, was a
wave-length contact with the positronic brain, a
proviso for the life hereafter. Once the human
brain died, there would still be control of the in-
ternal functions. For people who hated their dead,
the Mandroids made elaborate provisions for their
welfare.
The functions of the body were attached by the
‘“nervous system”’ to both brain systems, equally,
like the functions of a human body to each lobe of
the human brain, but with the Mandroid there was
nothing onesided about it, the attachment was one
of complete equality.
The facial tissue, built up on to the skull after
the human tissue had gone, was sculptured exactly
like the original features, wtih perhaps the single
difference that the artificial muscles did not yet
have the range of control their predecessors had
enjoyed.
There was no sexual reproductive function.
That was the task of this new Mandroid’s former
friends, the children and the young. His fertilizing
days were over. All he had to face now was some
ninety years of constantly healthy Mandroidal
life, once he had recovered from the shock.
The single living eye would be the light to his
human brain and the rest of his body would see
through the Mandroidal eye, on the left of the
face. So long as the right eye remained open and
seeing, he would be called ‘‘Mandroid’’. Once it
closed he would lose that title, or indeed, one
Seoe
ree1
ee
ae
 THE BLACK MOON 7

letter of it; the ‘‘M’’. So this was the SETcon and

the result was a fully matured Mandroid adult,
made up of 90% bionic and androidal materials
and 10% human tissue.
All was efficient and well determined but the
human brain retained some of its strange and
unpredictable habits after it had been wholly
severed from its limbs. Its formal responsibility
was sharply reduced in effect for although it was
the first and central control system, in practice the
electronic nervous system carried the burden of
everyday business. The blood required to keep it
alive was coursed around by mechanics so that
there wasn’t even the contemplation of death to
keep it on its toes. The heart had gone and gave no
messages of delight or dismay as it beat uncer-
tainly through life. There would be no moments of
indecision before death either, no period of pen-
itence once the heart had stopped during which the
brain could shut down its thoughts and make
ready for some other existence. The shutting of
the eye was its only check—the light through its
human sense would dim and then go black.
Stranger still, a phantom body remained, over-
laying the bionic vessel after the real one had
been stripped away. Using subtle forms of laser
photography a purplish halo could be seen in the
shape that now lay in bits on the surgery floor.
This was always present and grew as the human,
now Mandroid, would have grown, had it lived
past sixteen years. Perhaps the subconscious living
brain continued a vigil of imagined responsibility
over the phantom body after the SETcon like a
man whose leg has been amputated continues to
believe he still has the limb. It could account also
8 CABAL: Volume 2

for the almost pathological neurosis that Man-

droids suffer and few overcome—that they are not
human—that they are adapted Androids rather
than adapted Men. The terror also of final ex-
tinction, thus the determined banishing of the An-
droids once they have ‘‘died’’ and yet . . . still the
allowances and insurances taken out for the An-
droids benefit within the new Mandroid body. It
was as though a touch of love was imbued within
the system that hates. For what, after all, is a body
that the wearer of this temperate and long-
accustomed vessel may come to cherish? Who
knows, among the Mandroids_ themselves,
whether perhaps that cherishing might pervade
the very bionics themselves?

Pinball stood, his hands held loosely at his front,

his head hung low, watching the boy’s return
through the SETcon tunnel, transformed. Woo
stood at his side. A flood of tears ran down her
face and she moved a little closer to her lover so
that she might feel his humanidy, to offset the fear
and horror of the SETcon. Both she and Pinball
would soon be on the inside of that tunnel. They
both had the cancer. There was no choice for her;
it came directly from her father’s seed, passing
down the male line of the human children on
Charybdis, passed on in 100% of the cases within
the genes. The second a child was conceived within
a mother, it had cancer. The only way to cure the
cancer on Charybdis would have been to destroy
all the children and with them bring about the ex-
tinction of the human race. No Mandroid would
sanction such an act, so every Mandroid had to
struggle with his conscience as every young,
 THE BLACK MOON 9

human, fleshly beautiful child was converted into

a robot.
Pinball had contracted the virus immediately
upon entry into a mistaken time system; his bodily
defenses were in no way adequate to cope with the
- massive onslaught of a disease so virulent that it
could destroy a body completely within the first
twenty years of its life, leaving nothing but
mustering death behind, even when that body had
built up years of defenses. In Pinball’s case, the
doctors on Charybdis gave him six months.
Here he has returned. But before we can con-
tinue we must see how he came and went.
 CHAPTER TWO

The Beginning

There weren’t many places left that he could go

safely. His houses were occupied, even the home
in Scotland was crawling with doffers and none of
his friends dared contact him. So he had hired an
apartment, or rather a room, from his old pal Jab-
ber. Most of the time he remained inside, at the
window, watching Soho. He was only a few
meters from Blind Alley, an old haunt and the
other four members of the Cabal were generally
within a mile of him, but none of them came by or
even phoned. They couldn’t. The heat was on
them as much as him. He sat that particular day,
his elbows rested on the sill of the window and his
head sat cupped in his hands. It was winter, dusk
and it rained. There wasn’t even a TV to while
away the time. He just had to wait and wait until

11
12 CABAL: Volume 2

the doffers cooled off. That might be months or

even years.
The small room was ill-lit and bedecked with
ancient prints on the walls, mostly not very
straight. Strangely Pinball felt none of his usual
compunction to straighten them. He had lost a lot
of his furious fastidious nature just at the
moment. Boredom was getting at him from all
angles and his gammy arm had started to hurt |
again at the shoulder where it always did if things
weren’t working out right.
He looked out at the few people wandering
through the lower levels of London’s night spot.
There were no prostitutes out in the rain but there
were a few looking for them. Only the most
desperate though. You couldn’t tell them apart
from their clothes. They all wore dirty brown or
gray raincoats today, but you could tell by the way
they walked, mostly looking up at the first-floor
windows where the cheap tarts generally hung out,
when it was wet. They would thrust their great,
well-worn tits against the window-panes. That
way the poor sad guys down below didn’t get a
look at their faces and had to memorize which
window in the house so they could find the
corresponding door when they got up there. Pin- —
ball heard many a scream or bellow as would-be
clients picked the wrong doors. No doubt
sometimes they picked the wrong door and the
wrong girl, but found her tits much like the ones
he’d seen and proceeded without a suspicion of his
mistake.
None of it mattered but there was little else to
see or think about and Pinball’s mind had a habit
of turning to sex at such moments. Through one
 THE BLACK MOON 13

of the windows on the same level as his, he could

see what went on when client met professional.
She never closed her curtains and the various male
bottoms would heave back and forth, up and
down some twenty or thirty times a day without
let-up. He rarely saw her face, often saw her great
heavy bosom and her ass, waving at him through
the window as she settled the expectations of
another raincoated body.
After two months of this dreadful desolation
Pinball began seeing things, different things. He’d
taken to drawing his own curtains because the
prostitute never drew hers and on the first oc-
casion he looked towards the window from the
dingy room, holding a cup of tea in his hands, and
he saw what appeared to be the sea. The curtain
was probably no more than two inches open but
through the gap he saw water, large expanses of
water going back from the window sill as though
he lived in a seaside beach house. It took his
breath away and he blinked once but dared not
move in case it should go away. It had to be a
chimera. He knew that, but still it looked like the
sea and his mind wanted to see the sea, so he
remained in that position watching the gap in the
curtains for five hours before it went away. He’d
_ turned very carefully from his vigil to take out a
cigarette and light it, trying desperately not to
shift his eyes. But he glanced down once to find
out where the packet was and when he looked
back the image had passed. The curtains were still
open but he saw the old hard and fast buildings
across from him.
_ He smoked the cigarette, made some tea and
_ then went to bed to think about the experience.
 14 CABAL: Volume 2

The next day it happened again. He had

positioned the curtains just as they had been
before and again he saw the sea. This time he was
determined to sit it out, however long it took.
Even if he had to sit up ail night and not eat or
drink or smoke, he would watch the sea through
the curtains. But someone knocked on his apart-
ment door and for that second of sound he turned
from the window before he could prevent the
reflex. With his arms over the back of the chair, he
grimaced with disappointment, but as he turned
once more to confirm that the mirage had gone he
found that it had not. The sea was still there. He
tested it still further by turning away again and on
looking back he found no change. %
So he stood up and walked towards the window.
In a daring moment of defiance Pinball swept
back the curtain on the right and to his absolute
amazement he saw that the sea remained, but as a
haze of light which ran neatly down the alleyway
across from his apartment. Only in that alley was
there blue. It was as though there had been some
displacement of space or time or both, and the
alleyway had become one fraction of a seascape
while the rest remained normal, London city.
_ People walked down the alley and seemed unaf-
fected by the water that lapped within it. They
walked in at one end and Pinball saw them emerge
at the other without a drop of water on them or
any the worse for the experience. But still, it -
plagued him. Still there was the sea there in the
alleyway.
He sat up that night. Couldn’t sleep. He sat up
and watched the water moving gently before his
window. Then, around midnight, as he watched,
 THE BLACK MOON 15

smoking probably the twentieth cigarette since

“dark, he saw something move across the narrow
vision. Just for a second, as he watched, a figure
or color or shape moved across the waterfront in
the alleyway, and it wasn’t walking down the
alley. It was someone who stood and walked, or
something in that place where the sea was.
He twisted his fist into his exhausted and
strained eyes and as he opened them again he saw
that it was a small figure, a girl and she stood,
with her legs slightly apart, on the beach, her
hands on her hips, her head held up and dark long
hair flowing down her small, slender back. She
stood there, exactly placed in the alley of sea and
she looked straight in at Pinball’s window.
Though she must have been a hundred meters dis-
tant he could tell that she looked at him. Her body
was quite naked. She could not have been more
than fifteen years old and her small breasts bore
pointed and rounded nipples, the aureoles cov-
ering almost the whole of the breasts. She was
barely a woman and the slim tight muscles of her
body provoked Pinball with their youth and their
arrogance. : :
Who was she? Where was she? How was it that
he could see her and she him? Was he finally going
off his rocker?
He decided he was and went to bed. He slept for
a whole day and the following night. When he got
up she had gone and so had the sea.
He felt the most dreadful depression. As though
the only hope left in his life had been taken away,
as though he was going into withdrawal, he shut
the curtains completely and prevented them from
opening by pinning the edges together from top to
16 CABAL: Volume 2

bottom. Not even the small amounts of daylight

that filtered down from the top levels got into his
room now.
In this fashion Pinball remained, without eat-
ing, for nearly two weeks. At the end of it he
decided to kill himself.
He moved to the side cabinet where he kept’ a
blaster, and withdrew the huge weapon. He turned -
on the power unit that had been left unused for -
several months and allowed the gun to build up
enough energy to blow his own head off. Within a
minute this was achieved. He placed the muzzle
against his head, and closing his eyes he also
closed the contact. Nothing happened. He opened
his eyes again and turned towards the window
once more. The light shining through the dark
curtain was suddenly much stronger.
‘*Perhaps the bloody sea has come back.’’ He
said aloud. ‘‘Perhaps Woo is back.’’ He looked,
frowned. ‘‘Woo? Who the hell is Woo?’’ He put
down the blaster and went to the window. With
one tug from his good arm he pulled the curtains
back. The sea was there, and at the center of the
alleyway stood the girl he had called Woo.
He walked to the door, opened it and left the
apartment. He walked down the stairs and out
into the street, crossed the road and entered the
alleyway. No one saw him go, and no one at that
time missed him. He walked maybe halfway down
the alley and then vanished.

The beach. A moment of change had drawn him

to it. Pinball stood. Alone, he stood on the beach
that the change had drawn him to. The waves. The
second moment showed him the waves that the
 THE BLACK MOON 17

moment of change had drawn him to... . . He

stood, looking out and saw no horizon. There was
no horizon on Charybdis, no change between land
and sky, sea and air. The world was so big, the
world that Pinball had been drawn to because of
the change that he could see no horizon. He
looked and there was nothing. He did not believe.
He knew that at any moment he would be back
. in his single-roomed apartment, alone. But he
wasn’t.
He sang in his head.
This is a world I don’t believe, a place I can’t be
in. Like a wish given and taken, unexposed, true,
but quite false yet because the semi-conscious can-
not justify anything on it. There cannot be a
moment between a change in a metropolis and a
huge beach.
He had jumped. Through a turn in events con-
trolled outside his own experience, he had come
through a sideways dimension into something that
traveled alongside his own world but was many
hundreds of steps away from it. He knew that. He
knew nothing else.
He must have passed through a thousand other
worlds on the way. Someone had the power to
bring him there; who? Woo.
How many people would give their lives to the
devil to get such a change behind them? How
many sad consciences would give all they had?
How many would be given it? One. Pinball. No,
perhaps this was selfish, perhaps it happened all
the time. After all, if there was an infinity of
dimensions moving simultaneously alongside one
another then there must be an infinity of people
_ changing between the worlds without the other in-
18 CABAL: Volume 2

finity knowing anything about it. Even if they did

know about it they would justify it without a
ripple that anyone else would notice. So maybe it
was commonplace. It was commonplace. Accept
it.
Pinball accepted it.
He looked around at the still warm night.
To his right was a huge prism. Before him was
ocean and ocean and ocean. Behind him was land
and far away to the left was a massive wall that -
seemed to go on over the sea and land forever. In
its shadow, dimly visible, was a house. All this he
looked upon and began to believe.
He stood quite still, stunned. His body dared
not move a hair, except those disturbed by the
breeze. The breeze could do as it wished, that
wouldn’t change his place. If he moved a muscle
of his own volition he might switch back to Soho,
London. He did not budge, not a twitch, not a
breath. No matter what he would find here he
wanted not to leave.
But he could only see so far around him. He
could not see directly behind without turning that
statuesque head, frozen statue-head. He didn’t
dare. :
Someone had brought him there, a girl whom he
had seen in the crack of the curtains and then in ~
the alleyway as he looked down it; as he ap-
proached she had disappeared. Who?
Woo.
Maybe there was a time limit after which he
would remain regardless of whether he moved. .
Maybe he could rationalize a time limit. Maybe _
logic would give him a time limit. How? Well. If
he had been brought here then he had been
 THE BLACK MOON 19

brought for a purpose. It didn’t matter now what

the purpose might be. It didn’t matter if it was to
kill him, maim him for life, so long as there was a
purpose, for if there was a purpose then he could
move and stay. Maybe the purpose was that he
should move and be returned. No. That was sense-
less. He must be here in order to move and stay.
Maybe he was here to move, stay and die a second
later. Then one second on top of the minutes of
stillness would be worth the death.
He’d risk it. He moved. He turned, he shifted
his light feet, he twisted his body as though
moving in a slow-motion dance and _ twirled
around, and on the second turn he saw a girl, a
figure behind him, calm and still behind him;
who?
Woo.

A cool wind blew and the sounds that it carried

were coming from the prism standing away on the
beach. It wasn’t music but it lilted with a rhythm.
It wasn’t harsh but it fell on Pinball’s ears and
made him uncertain of himself and the place
where he stood.
**You seem uncertain,’’ she spoke to him.
LS |am.”’ i

“You needn’t be, you are safe now. I am

Woo.’’
“*Yes. Where is this?’’
‘This is Charybdis.”’ ;
**Not Earth?’’ Pinball turned fully to face her
tiny figure.
“No, though I am like you, I am human and
- alive.’’
**Yes. Why did you bring me here?”’
20 CABAL: Volume 2

‘*Because you looked so sad behind your cur-

tains. I thought you would like a holiday.”’
‘*This is a holiday?’’ Pinball felt he could laugh,
what a holiday. He had read about such holidays
in stories, in crazy stories people made up.
“‘If you wish it to be. If you like it here there is
nothing to oppress you perhaps.’’
‘“Only perhaps,’’ Pinball said flatly.
‘‘Everything is always perhaps.’’ She moved a
little closer.
‘*Are there others here?’’
‘*Yes. Many others. But not here on the beach.
There is only us on the beach.’’ She moved still
closer.
*‘Can I stay?”’
“*Yes, you can stay. Foraas long as you wish you
can stay.’’ She touched his weak arm and he in-
stinctively pulled it away.
‘*You are not happy with your body?’’
‘*Not with that part of it.’’
“It is sad that you are unhappy with it. Your
body is beautiful, so beautiful that you need to
have something that makes you sad.”’
‘“How’s that?’’ He shrank slightly from her. It
was absurd to shrink from someone so small and
tender, someone so young.
The music from the prism sounded low notes
and the tones drifted through the air, diverted
slightly by the wind.
- “There can be no harm now. Live and relax
yourself now. Enjoy being here with me. Perhaps
it is a dream, perhaps it is real. It does not matter.
For now you are here and I think we cannot be
disturbed.”’
‘“You are a child,’’ Pinball reasoned.
 THE BLACK MOON 21

**So I am. But on Charybdis only the children

make love.”’
“IT cannot .. .’”’ He stepped away from her as
she slid her hand over his huge chest.
**You came willingly, you should try to accept
the change you sought. All the change. You are
alone and away from your world. You are here.
No one will chastise you.”’
“But I cannot be sure . . . I cannot commit
myself and my body, my thoughts to someone so
strange in this strange place. Anything can happen
now.’’
“*Yes. That is the joy of it all. Anything can
happen when you have found something impos-
sible. Breathe the air. Listen to the prism sing.’’
He listened. The light that shafted through the
huge glass prism splashed into the sea and en-
lightened the waves that lapped gently at its feet.
The sounds were moving across the surface of the
glass and out like a musical light house.
**Will you not love me, Pinball?”’
‘*Is that why you brought me here?”’
‘‘Some.’’
He lay down on the sand and she beside him.
““Would you like to swim?’’
“Ves,”

He took off his clothes as he sat there beside her

and she put out her hand to take his. Her slight,
brown naked, body bounced with strength and
health. She pulled his arm, his strong arm and
wrapped it around her tiny waist. He looked down
at the small young breasts admiring her softened
nipples and the slight plumpness of her stomach.
They walked slowly down to the water’s edge.
It was warm and inviting. They both stepped in
22 CABAL: Volume 2

and walked out until they were waist deep and

then Pinball dived into the soft sea, his head
down, his single strong arm thrust forward, his
body feeling the glorious freedom of nakedness.
When he emerged it suddenly struck him that in
that split second before he surfaced he might stop
the dream. That by abandoning himself to a false
reality he might once again stand the risk of
switching back to the real world he hated so much.
But as he opened his eyes he saw his safety within
the unreal. Woo was not to be seen. Then he felt —
her warm arms wrap about him....
‘“‘That’s nice,’’ she said. ‘‘You learn fast,
Pinball.’’ She led him out of the water and back
onto the beach where they sat down and leaned
back....
They walked along the beach towards a house
that stood close to the breakwaters. Woo had not
explained anything to Pinball yet. He hardly
believed that he had simply been brought here at
the whim of a small girl, even though he welcomed
the place and the love. Now that he had his
sobriety back, much sated by the love of the child
Woo, he considered his position. He believed in
Woo. She was young and fresh, unconcerned to
cheat him but he did not believe what she did not
say. He asked her questions and her answers were
canny, ambivalent. This was a magical child,
strong in the arts and craft of gentle deceit and he
was not fooled by her.
She led him to the house and he looked at the
massive Wall that ran across their path, some four
or five kilometers ahead. It seemed endless, run-
ning out of sight in both directions, and its height
was at least three hundred meters. Why should
 THE BLACK MOON 23

they wish such a wall? It skirted everything, en-

closing the beach and the sea, almost the sky of
this strange, enormous planet. They reached a
veranda. Steps ran down to the beach and at the
top was a tall figure, hidden in detail by the dusk
light but very tall and a man, or male shape. Woo
spoke to him in a language Pinball did not un-
derstand and he stood back a little as they
mounted the steps. Then he spoke directly to Pin-
ball. :
“Tam Kee. Welcome to Charybdis. Please come
into my home, there is food and drink for you.”’
As he stepped back Pinball got a clear look at
him. He was, to all intents and purposes, a robot,
but with a very distinct difference. He had one
human eye which lay behind a glass lens, encased
in a steele frame. Robot, on reflection, was too
crude a term. His body was perfectly formed like a
man’s, the muscle and shape perfectly sculptured.
The clothing he wore was a one-piece tunic from
his neck to his feet, all blue and the movement of
his steps showed him to be entirely adept. An An-
droid of very advanced technical development.
He turned to Pinball and spoke again.
“I am called a Mandroid, Pinball. In case you
wonder at my physical appearance, I am 10% man
and 90% android. My body is artificially built
from childhood. My brain, however, and one eye,
are human. Please, sit down and relax.”’
Pinball did as he was bid.
‘*Am I really here?’’ he asked.
**You are here, entirely here. What makes you
doubt it?’’ Kee spoke as he sat opposite Pinball.
Woo went out of the room and came back a
moment later with a glass of something very green
24 CABAL: Volume 2

which she handed to Pinball. She sat on the arm of

the chair beside him and lay her arm across his
shoulder.
‘‘Well, it may not be an unaccustomed situation
for you, Kee, but I have never been transported
across two worlds to make love with a fifteen-
year-old child.’’
‘“No. Of course. Forgive us. It is not, however,
something we do very often. I hope that you
found the sensation not too unpleasant.”
*‘No. Not at all, especially the love-making.
Woo is an extraordinary child.”’
‘**Yes. She is one of our brightest children, but
soon to be a child no longer.’’
““Why?”’

‘*All children on Charybdis become Mandroids

at the age of sixteen years. Her time comes in only
ten months.’’
‘‘Ten months. My God.’’
“*Yes,’’ said Woo. ‘‘Ten months is not long.”’
‘Why does she become a Mandroid . . . why did
you become one?’’ Pinball asked, uncertain of
whether he should.
‘Because of the cancer.”’
“‘Cancer.’’ Pinball sat forward with a jerk.
Cancer in this place seemed entirely out of
character.
‘*Yes. Everyone on Charybdis has cancer om
the moment they are born.’’
‘““Everyone?”’
‘*Everyone.’’
‘*That presumably means me too.’’
**You too.’
‘*Christ.’” He stood up and paced the floor,
banging his fist into the palm of his hand. So,
 THE BLACK MOON 25

there was a catch. ‘‘You bring me here, let me

fuck one of your kids and then you tell me I’ve got
an incurable disease . . . what the hell is the idea of
that?’’
“It is not incurable.”’
*‘Oh I see, you mean I-can have my body cut off
and replaced with wires and plastic . . . something
I’ve always wanted .. . thanks a lot.’’
“*You may be the beginning of our new race
Pinball . . . do not take it too lightly.”’
‘‘What the hell are you talking about .. . the
beginning of your new race... . I’m not in-
terested in being the beginning of anything... all
I wanted was to live the rest of my life as a human
being, not a robot.’’
‘‘We brought you here because you seemed so
unhappy. In that room you would have committed
suicide had we left you..Is it not a better alterna-
tive to live on a beautiful planet as a Mandroid.. .
or even as a robot?”’
Pinball was silent.
**T don’t believe it.’’ He felt shock and anger.
**You don’t believe what?’ Kee asked.
*‘That I have cancer. It’s ludicrous . . . just
because you have the disease it doesn’t mean I
have... howcan I be sure... I don’t want to lose
my body just because you say I should... .”’
**We will prove it to you. . . if you wish.”’
Pinball suddenly felt very tired. He sat down
again and laid his head in his hands. The whole
situation was ludicrous. He came from his own
land, his own world, however bad that might have
been when he left it, at least it was familiar. Here
everything was different, the people . . . if they
could be called people . . . were friendly in a way,
26 CABAL: Volume 2

but somehow he knew that he was there for

reasons beyond his control. The girl Woo was
sweet and pretty and he had enjoyed making love
to her, but that was past, and he had none of the
impetus that desire could give. The Mandroid gave
nothing away. He sat before Pinball like a wise old
judge, the facts of the case clearly set within his
brain, without apparent sentiment, passing judg-
ment on a creature for whom he had no care. Pin-
ball was alone.
‘You return to your sadness Pinball. There is
no need to be sad. You are here under our protec-
tion. We will serve you, help you in any way we
can. We do care for you. . . even Kee the Man-
droid can care . . . more than you think. It is only
because he cannot show love in his face that he ap-
pears uncaring. You must try to adapt to the new
life you find.’’ Woo spoke softly as she moved
closer to Pinball, placing her slim arm around him
once more. She moved the other hand to his head
and placed it over his forehead, curving the palm
to fit to his furrowed brow and he felt a warmth
slide under his skin. It wasn’t simply the warmth
from the heat in her hand but a deeper feeling that
pervaded his body and his mind, a calming, soft
and caring warmth.
““You have great powers Woo . . that is some
comfort.’’
“Come Pinball . . . come with us to the city of
Charybdis . . . there are ways that we can show
you pleasure and happiness here and you can have ~
that weak arm mended . . . we will give you a new
arm, stronger, firmer and more useful than your
strong arm. If you do not like it we can put back ©
what you have... . all things are possible here.’’
 THE BLACK MOON 27

‘*First step towards becoming a robot,’’ Pinball

said churlishly and then regretted it.
““Yes . . . but not for a while yet. Even if the
cancer has already struck, it will be many months
before you will notice it.’’
‘‘Many months... many months...”’’
‘‘Months on Charybdis are longer than months
on Earth.’’ Woo said, picking up the despair Pin-
ball felt.
‘“How much longer?”’
*‘Our days are 34 of your hours and our nights
32 hours. So, a month here is over 80 days in your
own thinking. You will become accustomed to the
difference soon enough.”’
Pinball stood up, willing to become resigned if
nothing else to the idea that he had little choice but
to follow these two strange creatures through this
strange world. He did not wish to go back to Earth
... he would rather become a robot than that.
 CHAPTER THREE

Cancer

The night was full now. The darkness overcame

everything. Kee explained to Pinball that two suns
shone on the planet and for 32 hours in the orbit
of the planet, both were over the distant horizon.
The world was vast, some 300 times bigger than
Earth with a circumference of 10 million kilo-
meters. With no visible orbiting moons the com-
plete lack of light brought everything intc total
blackness for that time, and the people had
developed a cat-like sight in darkness. Pinball was
almost blind, Woo leading him by the hand down
the steps of the house at the other side and to-
wards the ground car. Kee climbed in, using the
infrared sight fitted into his androidal eye. He
switched on huge blaring floodlights at the front
- and sides and rear of the vehicle and Pinball put
1

29
30 CABAL: Volume 2

one hand across his face to shield his eyes against

the sudden brightness.
When he had become accustomed to the change
he looked around at the forecourt of the house.
The ground was covered in a kind of grass, but
much thicker, like beach grass on Earth, with long
strands of yellow-green leaves. The car hovered
above the ground once the lights had been turned
on, but there was no sound of any engine or power
unit. He could see only some thirty or forty meters
around him, the darkness was so intense, but he
noticed that beams on the front of the car gave
distance vision with infrared beams that turned
the color of everything into a luminous red. The ~

effect was eerie and only added to Pinball’s feeling

of desolation and doubt. A huge tree stood to his
right, its trunk swooping low along the ground for
several meters before rising up in a curve and into
branches and leaves. It looked as though it must
have been trained to grow that way. As they
passed along the ground away from the house he
saw more of these trees. There were no roads for
the vehicles had no wheels, travelling on an
aerofoil principle, and the result was a wide land-
scape without scars, though Pinball could see
nothing of it now.
No one spoke during the journey which lasted
maybe half an hour by Pinball’s watch. It oc-
curred to him, as he glanced down at his wrist,
that within a few hours the watch would become
more of a confusion than an aid, for its twelve
hours gave no indication of whether night was
coming or day. As they drew close to the city,
Woo picked up his thought.
“We will give you a time-piece, a watch Pinball,
 THE BLACK MOON 31

a digital watch which times our planet’s move- ;

ment. Then you will not be confused.’’ She laid a
hand upon his great huge upturned palm and gen-
tly stroked the luxuriously padded flesh. But this
too sank the man into a deeper sense of his own
misery. All that lovely flesh would soon be gone.
The car rode up a steep hill and mounted the
top. It hesitated a moment before swooping down
and Pinball looked out of the window to see
several vehicles moving in the same direction from
other points. As they began their descent thin
sounds could be heard around the vehicle. They
began in the distance and grew closer and louder
but at no time were they unpleasant. It was as
though an eléctronic synthesizer were being
played, improvising.
‘“What are those sounds?’’ he asked Kee.
‘“Those are the speed sounds . . they tell us our
speed and control our descent into the city. They
monitor the engines and also pick up the identity
of the travellers. A kind of defense and warning
system you could say.”’
*‘Good sounds,’’ Pinball remarked.
‘‘Good while you are good,’’ Woo said. ‘‘If you
are bad they change.”’
Pi see,”
The city lay ahead of them. Observed from
above it looked very flat; none of the buildings
rising above two floors and everything terribly
cluttered, like a thick, woolly carpet of stone and
_metal. There were no roads between the building
and around the outskirts were hundreds of parked
_ vehicles.
*“No one may drive within the city. We have to
leave the car in the pounds and go by subway.”’
 32 CABAL: Volume 2

‘‘Subway? You have subways?’’ Pinball felt a

slight elation at the familiarity.
He looked with slightly more interest out at the
city as they approached the pounds. The stone was
white, like a Spanish village; with balconies and
many long, low mediterranean buildings. The
balconies very often leaned over the small walk-
ways that ran between them, almost meeting
across the span, some eight or nine feet above the
ground.
The walkways were narrow, hardly wide enough
to carry two passing Mandroids. The ground was
all paved with small mosaics made up from
colored stones and depicting various patterns,
which from the distance Pinball could not
distinguish. There was nothing modern about the
city; in fact, it looked old, most of the stone worn
well into rounded edges and corners.
They stopped.
The vehicle settled slowly to the ground and ail
three climbed out.
‘‘Now we must go to the nearest subway port
and take a car across the city almost to the other
side. We will visit the SETcon laboratories.”’
Somehow, without wishing to, Pinball found
himself comparing the SETcon to an abattoir. He ~
wondered if Woo’s ESP gifts were transferring
comparisons or merging with his own experiences.
The subway was not like the New York sub-
‘ ways. In fact, there was nothing like the New York
subways and this was even less like the New York
subways than nothing. It was big and clean,
everything lined with mosaics like the pavings out-
side. On the walls were young people depicted
walking, talking, carrying books and playing with
 THE BLACK MOON 33

balls, kites and other less recognizable toys.

As they entered the smooth-floored station a
long, sleek car slid into the tunnel from the
opening. It was built for no more than ten people,
and as two other Mandroids entered behind them
another vehicle swept in behind the first.
*‘Does everyone have their ae car?’’ Pin-
ball asked Kee.
**Yes. The population of the city is widespread.
The subways are massive and there are thousands
of stations. The only way to run it efficiently is to
have thousands of cars.”’
‘Don’t you increase the likelihood of ac-
cidents?’’ Pinball searched for the details.
““No. Everything is controlled by inter-action
devices. Each car is fitted with sensors and has
direct contact with all other vehicles in its area. If
another vehicle is too close one of them shifts into
another level.’’
“*You mean there are several levels of tunnel for
each vehicle?’’
‘“Every subway track from every platform has a
choice of ten routes between-each platform so that
the car can divert if it wishes at any time between
two platforms, every fifty meters.’’
_ **The ground under Charybdis must be an im-
mense labyrinth of tunnels. Doesn’t it weaken the
foundation?’’
**No, the city of Charybdis is spread over thir-
teen thousand kilometers square and the maxi-
mum height of the structures is no more than ten
meters. Weight per square meter is minimal and
there is no heavy traffic. In any case the floor of
Charybdis is a one-meter thick sheet of hardened
plastic stretching over the 170 million square
34 CABAL: Volume 2

kilometers. That is our foundation.”’

‘*A world based on a plastic foundation,”’ Pin-
ball muttered to himself.
As the subway car built up speed, pictures on
the walls of the tunnel, lit brightly from above and
below, began to animate. A story of movement
and skill was told as they sped past, the mosaics
implanted at the correct distances to compensate
for the increases and decreases of speed of the.
cars. Each time they darted off down a different
tunnel to avoid an oncoming vehicle, the story
would branch into a different but quite convincing
episode, all the ends neatly knotted and bowed.
‘*Better than advertising.’’ Pinball remarked to
Woo.
‘*Advertising?’’ Woo questioned.
‘“‘Our subways have rows and rows of ad-
vertising posters on the walls and in the cars. Sell,
sell, sell... that’s the motto.”’
‘*This is advertising of a kind,’’ said Kee. ‘‘Ad-
vertising the children and the merits of
humanidy.”’
‘‘Humanidy, what is humanidy?’’ Pinball
asked.
‘‘The power of humanness,’’ Woo answered.
‘‘The more humanidy you have the stronger you
are in the eyes of the Mandroid. Sadly, the crea-
tures on Charybdis with the least humanidy are
the Mandroids themselves . . . that is apart from
those who have dropped the ‘M’.’’ She went quiet.
‘*The what?’’ Pinball turned.
‘*It is not important, you will learn.”’
‘“‘Wait a minute . . . go back a step...
humanidy .. . ?’’ Pinball’s fastidious brain hated
to be cheated of explanations.
 THE BLACK MOON 35

**Children have the most humanidy. Remember

in your own religion it is Children who sit on the
right hand of God and who form the innocence of
mankind . . . so here it is Children who sit on the
right hand of good and in their goodness and
strength they form the future humanidy of our
race. The Mandroid is made up of only that power
which a child can retain after the SETcon. If he
has lost his innocence and his power of human-
ness, then he is a lesser Mandroid.”’
‘*And what do you call innocence and human-
ness? Do you call it making love at fifteen and
taking people from one world and transporting
them to another?’’ Pinball said.
**You chastise, Pinball . . . our world, as I told
you, is not like yours. Humanidy is not weakness
and ignorance. A child on Earth, until he or she is
almost grown to adulthood, is defined as a child
through lack of knowledge and repression. We are
children because we are young and fresh, because
our bodies have not been misused and neither have
our brains. We have youth and therefore strength
and health. We can withstand the cancer because
we have youth and health. Our bodies are
therefore perfect for the injection of complete
_ knowledge and understanding of life. Thus. . .
while we are able we learn all we can. We learn
thought transference because it is good to un-
derstand how people think. We learn physical
teleportation because it is part of the power of Zen
and the power of the astral and therefore develops
our mental capacity. We learn psychokinetics
because we have no choice. The energy in our
young bodies and in our minds is so great that we
are all able to throw rickety-ghosts around . . . we
36 CABAL: Volume 2

are all able to control poltergeists. We learn to

love because it is the child’s female body that must
carry the new child . . .”’ She stopped, turned her
head away from Pinball, as though she felt she
had said something she should not.
‘*And you will carry my child?’’ Pinball asked.
“Yes, I already do,’’ she replied.
They remained silent for a moment and the car
sped along, darting in and out of tunnels, passing
the wall stories.
‘“‘And .. .’’ Pinball started, picking up before
he had set the words in motion, that the question
he wished to ask was full of forbidden truths and
strange taboos. But still . . . as stubborn as ever
.. ‘*... what about that Wall. . . does Charybdis
continue over the other side?’’
‘You area shrewd and complex man Pinball
. .. you have begun already to master the powers
of thought, transfer . . .”” Woo hesitated, turned
her head towards Kee’s, as though she transmitted
a question to him privately. He took up the
dialogue himself.
‘‘Woo spoke to you of dropping the ‘M’ Pin-
ball. You saw or felt her disturbance. Then your
brain came back and began to delve into her mind.
What it found was a connection between the drop-
ping of the ‘M’ and the Wall. . . so it pushed a
seemingly irrelevant question to the surface. You ~
humans on Earth all have the power of telepathy
and you would be surprised how often it is used,
without your conscious mind understanding it.
Your semi-conscious thinking is so much more
complex than the upper levels of your mind you
cannot understand your own real reasoning. The
human brain does not understand itself. It is
 THE BLACK MOON 37

layered in years of protective woolliness. Develop-

ment is the cutting away of driftwood, cotton-
wool and all the mush that lies floating in igno-
rance.”’
“*You are a poet Kee.’’ Pinball smiled for the
first time since he could remember.
‘Kee is the wisest of the Mandroids . . . his
humanidy is unassailable. None of the rest of the
council has his wisdom and humanidy. As a child
he could actually change time streams. . . he could
really alter the whole fabric of a time stream . . . at
will.’’
“‘No more Woo. ..no more,”’ Kee objected.
“*T believe he can still do it . . . but he refuses.”’
‘*There are enough energetic children . . . there
is no need for me to play magician any more,’’ he
said.
~ *Does such power really exist in all human
brains?’”’
“If you care to let it begin, the power can be
- developed. You have already begun because your
environment has so confused your brain it has
been forced to shed its parochial concepts. Soon,
all manner of things will be acceptable to you.
You'll see. . . in time.’’
‘How exciting,’’ Pinball said. He felt really
very good for a while.
“‘But what happens if you’re right about the
cancer .. . I’ll lose my humanidy when I lose my
body.”’
*““No... you will have more humanidy, Pinball,
than any of us, because you have been alive for so
much longer than we were. Our children all go
through the SETcon at sixteen years of age. You
are thirty-five ... maybe more.. . think of all the
 Se
38 CABAL: Volume 2

humanness you have built up.”’ e

l
“Your sixteen years . . . is that my sixteen —
years?”’
‘*Yes. We translate for your benefit Pinball...
our language is not at all the same as yours. I had
to spend months teaching Woo to speak like
you.”’
‘You mean you’ve been watching me for
months?’’ .
‘In a fashion, yes. In a fashion.”’
**Oh I give up,’’ Pinball admitted. Soon after he
did, the subway car drew gently to a halt.
The station was much like the one they had left,
only that the illustrations in mosaic were different.
The subway car slipped out of the station into the
tunnel and was gone, almost without a sound.
On the wall above the level of Pinball’s head
was a sign. It was written in hieroglyphics that he
could not understand but he guessed it might say
the district in which they were.
‘*It says nothing of the kind,’’ Woo interrupted
his thoughts.
““Oh, so what does it say?’’ he asked, politely.
“In effect it says ‘Home of the Simnul Energy -
Tone converter’.> 99
‘‘The SETcon,’’ Pinball said. ‘‘The home of the
SETcon . . . should such a thing have ahome...I
wouldn’t aie it space in mine.”’
“‘You regard it with far greater animosity than
we do, Pinball. . .’’ Kee said.
“Only peceuise you are resigned to it,”’ Pinball
countered.
Kee turned on Pinball with the merest hint of
anger in his movement. Then he stopped and
spoke over-calmly.
 THE BLACK MOON 39

‘You know nothing of our people Pinball .. .

nothing of the agonies we endure through the can-
cer, nothing of our development or even of the
_ source of our determinations. We have suffered
the cancer which dwells within our genes for
thousands of years, and every attempt has been
made by every generation of men and Mandroid
to cure it by other means. This way, the way of the
SETcon, is the one way that has survived. Do not
mock it. It is the savior of our race. Without the
SETcon we would all be androids.’’ He spoke the
words with a churlish distaste and flooding back
into Pinball’s head came the same question he had
asked before. What about the Wall . . . what is on
its other side? He realized at that moment how
cleverly Kee had bypassed his question by ex-
plaining the mental structure of his thoughts and
leading him neatly away from what he really
wanted to know. Why was it that each time the
word Android came into the conversation or the
letter ‘‘M’’ was mentioned, dropping from Man-
droid, the Wall came through his thinking? It
must be, Pinball concluded, that the Android and
the Wall were so powerfully and intrinsically con-
nected in the mind of Woo, that she could not
prevent a trail of thought from leaking out.
So be it. He would find out about these an-
droids. And the Wall. Nothing so strong could go
undiscovered for long . . . and nothing so
significant could simply be of no interest.
They entered the large swing doors that moved
back as they approached and were at once in a
sterile building. The smell was strong and im-
pregnated Pinball’s memory forever. Woo hesi-
tated a moment before stepping forward. Her
40 CABAL: Volume2
reaction was wholly involuntary, and she seemed
physically unable to step forward at once. Pinball
again picked up very strong associations of unhap-
piness and unwillingness. Finally, as Kee waited,
his back turned to Pinball and Woo, she found the
strength to take the next step. After that she
walked and talked as her normal self, bright and
with a childish wisdom which Pinball found more
and more enticing.
‘‘We must go to the diagnostic clinics, Pinball.
There you will have to submit to a scanning
technique which is not exactly pleasant, but carries
no pain with it. It will tell you exactly where the
cancer is, how considerable the development of
the cells are and how long it will take to become
fatal.’’
‘*You presume then that there is no doubt at I
have it.’’ Pinball looked up at the Mandroid.
‘“Everyone on Charybdis has cancer Pinball . . .
you are on Charybdis, so...’’
‘I see. You don’t have it though . . . how come ©
it doesn’t get to your brain or your eye?’”
‘*Because they are sealed off from the environ-
ment.”’
**Clever ... stuffy though.”’
‘You have found your humor again. . . that is
good.
Kee walked faster than Pinball and Woo, who
walked together a few meters behind, talking.
Other Mandroids passed them but paid little at-
tention to them. Pinball noticed that each Man-
droid was very different. Their features were as
varied as if they were human and so too were their
body shapes. |
‘*You must understand that talking of the can-
 THE BLACK MOON 41

cer for Kee is very difficult. He, above all the rest
of the council members and much above the or-
dinary Mandroid, is most sensitive to the judg-
ments you imply. He loves the children of his race
dearly and he mourns the closing of the human
race on Charybdis.”’
‘‘Mourns the closing of it . . . you mean it is
becoming extinct?’’
**Oh yes. There can be no doubt of it. Every ten
years the number of children drops by about half a
per cent. Each year fewer children are born or
fewer. survive. We are a dying people. It is esti-
mated that within less than 150 years there will be
only five children born each year, and then of
course the end will come. There is nothing they
can do. It’s as if nature were saying . . . I’m sorry,
I’ve tried to keep you going but it’s no good and
it’s phasing us out. No matter what we do, the
boys. are not producing the high sperm counts
needed to impregnate the girls. The sperm carries
the cancer you see, and the general scientific belief
is that the cancer gene is gradually weakening the
other genetic structures so that with each genera-
tion of weakness more weakness comes.’’
“*So it is the male that carries the disease within
the genes?’’ Pinball said.
“‘Oh, yes. There is actually a cancer gene. It is
as though we are food for an alien monster that
has inveigled its way into our very structure.’’
“Can you not perform some sort of genetic
surgery and cut the cancer gene out?”’
“‘That has been attempted but the result is
mutation. The cancer gene, you see, is connected
with other genetic necessities in such a way that it
actually grows within them. We would have to be
42 CABAL: Volume 2

able to set time back somehow, to the point when

the cancer gene began its growth within ions body
cells and at that point change the growth.
‘‘Well . . . you are the time travelers all. . .why
not try it?”’
‘*Because there too you see it is not so simple.
Time is connected within our fabric. If we could
go back to the beginning and find the right point
. even if that impossible task were not so. . .
then we would damage other aspects of our own
future that we do not wish to see changed. Time
travel is not like you imagine . . . or like your
people imagine. It is a tremendously complex
fabric, interwoven within each stitch of your lives.
To travel in time you cannot simply construct a
machine with knobs and switches. You must learn
a whole way of thinking and working. You must
delve into yourself and find the strands which lead
back and forth through time. You must learn to
hold on to them and travel along them. In space
you iors learn of time. In time you will learn of
space.’
“‘You are so sharp. . . so gifted, Woo. I wonder
if my feeble brain could ever match yours.”’
‘*Your brain is not feeble. It is strong, deter-
mined and clear. You understand your own
psyche better than any I have met. Never despair
. even in the short time left to you before the
SETcon operations . . . you will learn enough to
face them and everything beyond.’’
They fell silent; Pinball, because he felt an in-
creasing sense of horror at their presumptions that
he was soon to lose every ounce of his much-loved
body, and Woo because she knew what he felt and
 THE BLACK MOON 43

could say no more. It was hard for her to retain

the unfamiliar sense he had with the SETcon. It
formed so intrinsic a part of her life that she had
to do a whole rethink to become involved in his
fears.
Kee turned a corner and they followed, now
twenty or thirty meters behind him. Abruptly he
opened a door and stepped in.
‘*Here is the diagnostic room. Now. There is no
danger or pain to you here. You simply remove
your clothes and lie up against that glass screen
there. The smells and tastes and sounds are un-
pleasant to us because we have a sort of inherited
horror of the SETcon, but to you no doubt they
will mean nothing.’’
Pinball took off his clothes and leaned up
against the long padded couch that was stretched
diagonally beneath the glass screen. The screen
immediately lit up and began to scan his body with
a lazy, unconcerned action, passing smoothly over
each region, starting at the abdomen and moving
down and then up again. It stopped at one point
over his stomach area and then moved on. It re-
turned to the stomach and moved in a little closer.
Then it shut itself off.
~ Come, now... that was easy, wasn’t it?’’ Kee
said, stepping forward to take Pinball’s arm and
help him out of the machine. Pinball dressed.
Kee stepped over then to the panel and console
that ranged away from the diagnostic screen.
Within one minute, and before Pinball had
done up his belt, the Mandroid turned to face him.
**You have cancer of the stomach.”’
Pinball frowned, felt the bile in his gut rise and
44 -CABAL: Volume 2

just managed to stop himself from being very sick.

He sat down. Woo moved tohis side and lay a
hand on his shoulder. He shook her off.
‘*It is as yet very slight. No more than a day’s
growth, but because your tissue is older and
weaker and does not renew quite so quickly as a
child’s might, you will find the cancer will take
hold much faster. The SETcon gives you about
seven months before the operations will be
necessary.”’
Somehow the complete realization of his fate
had not come to Pinball before. Being told by a
robot and a young girl on an alien planet that you
have cancer, is not calculated to make for im-
mediate authenticity. But somehow, the great
complicated machinery before him carried com-
plete authority. Now he believed it. And more im-
portant, so did that semi-conscious brain. Now
that deeper level of consciousness was willing to
release the information in shock-waves to the
upper levels which would rush frantically about
the body looking for evidence of. the foreign in-
surgence that had invaded the delicate and de-
fenseless tissue of their homeland. ;
Pinball leaned forward and buried his head
within his hands. He was terrified and in a state of
complete depression. To die in space flight or by
the bullet of a doffer, he could accept. To die by
his own hand or in a fight down the bum end of
Soho’s ghettos would be a fitting and reasonable
end. But to die over seven months of a virulent
cancer on an alien planet without familiar sur-
roundings or people was utterly ridiculous.
‘*T shall have to go back,’’ he said at last.
‘‘What?’’ Woo had evidently not been listening
 THE BLACK MOON 45

in on his thoughts, judging by her shocked re-

action.
**T shall have to go back to Earth.”’
““Why? Why take your life back there and lose
it completely? Here you can live. We can give you
a body that will last forever and a life that will last
for longer than you could even without the cancer.
You can live for fifty years more; why take that
away from yourself?’”’
**And what after that . . . what happens when I
drop the ‘M’? How long will I have to live in hell
. . . how long will I be an Android for . . . in pen-
ance for this. . . this artificial limb that you want
to attach to my brain?’’
“Let him go Woo . . let him go back to Earth
and die. . . he has done all we want him to do.’’
Pinball turned to look at Kee, a gleam of horror
and anger in his eyes.
“You ugly mechanical bastard . . . you get me
here . . . you extract my cancer-free sperm from
me by using a pretty young vessel and then you
chuck me out again... I ought to kill you... you
. .”’ Pinball threw himself at Kee with such
mighty force that the Mandroid was skittled off
his feet and sprawled across the hospital floor.
Within a second Pinball had himself up and on the
Mandroid, his one strong arm forward and the
mighty hand that had developed the strength of
ten hands, wrapped about the throat of the prone
Kee. What he hoped to achieve was doubtful but
within seconds of his first action it struck him how
ludicrous it was to imagine that he could squeeze
the life out of a robot. So he began pounding his
face with heavy beating rhythm. It did not last
long however, for Kee simply stood up, carrying
 46 CABAL: Volume 2

Pinball with him. He put both hands gently about

Pinball’s shoulders and pried him off like a
monkey picks a flea.
“There is no reason to blame me Pinball. I do
not wish you to die.”’
‘“What do you mean?”’
“You were brought here so that we might give
ourselves a chance of a new race, but we offer you
- much in return and you wish to throw it away by
returning to your own world. Do not forget also,
that if you go there the result will be a complete
reversal of the fortunes of the two worlds. Cha-
rybdis will over the centuries become like Earth,
without cancer and peopled by human beings.
Earth will become infested by a disease which will
gradually take hold until, as it has done here, it
will delve its irrespressible way into the genetic
make up of man and so he will become bionic,
stage by stage. As we did. All this will happen if
you return even for just a moment to Earth. By
the simple act of selfishness you will deprive your-
self and your people of everything.’’
Pinball walked slowly away from Kee. His
soberness almost returned.
“Very well,’’ he said, quietly. ‘‘So, I have can-
cer. What do I do for the next seven months
before the SETcon?’’
‘““You learn our ways, you are taught how to
cope with the change-over period after the SET-
con and you live with Woo or any other child you
wish. You make love as often as you can with one
or many—preferably female—members of Cha-
rybdis and you enjoy what you will find a very
desirable world.’’
‘*But only on this side of the Wall.”’
 THE BLACK MOON 47

‘That is the one clear law. You may not, under

any circumstances, go over or under the Wall.”’
Giving that sort of red light to Pinball was like
offering a cloak to a bull. There were just two
things he planned to do now before the time came
for him to lose his body: one, go back to Earth
and get a second opinion, leaving the cancer
behind, and two, get over that Wall and find out
what went on at the other side.
Well . . . what better chance could a guy get to
kill off the race that spawned him . . . like anyone
condemned to death by reason, Pinball believed
none of it. He did not believe for a single moment
the idea that he had incurable cancer, nor did he
believe for a single second that he would carry it
back to Earth and infect the whole race. Earth was
Earth was Earth . . . and Earth—his home—was
not going to die from some bloody alien gene. The
sensible people with whom he shared a planet
would find a way. In seven months? They left the
SETcon and returned to the beach home.
 CHAPTER FOUR

The Storm

That night on Charybdis there was a storm. They

were rare events but when they came, there was
nothing to compare. Nothing to compare with the
violence and the dazzling drama of them. Pinball
_lay awake in his bed in Kee’s house. Woo was
asleep next to him.
- The beginning came from the distance, an eerie
humming coupled with the sound of what seemed
like the rapid cry of a bird in distress. It grew
louder very quickly and developed into the sound
of an air raid of fighter craft swooping overhead.
At first Pinball leaped out of bed, thinking it
might be some attack, somehow he imagined that
perhaps on the other side of the Wall were
aggressive aliens who might periodically launch at-
tacks on the Mandroids and that this was they
coming now. He looked out of the window up at

49
50 CABAL: Volume 2

the sky, straining his neck to see. Then he looked

down at the beach and the tide was rising like a
hurricane had hit it without warning, the swell
rising over the beach with so great a force that the
wind must have risen from nothing to a hundred
kilometers per hour within the few seconds it took
him to get across the room. All the trees and
vegetation near the house were flapping and the
sound of shutters crashing against the windows in
the building could be heard above the racket of the ~
wind itself. The pitch of the whining attack grew
louder and higher and everything began to rever-
berate with the sounds. They took on a multitude
of tones, as though an orchestra played in a frenzy
above his head, swooping and turning to swoop
again, twisting away and then back again.
He did not. know what to do. Some damage
must be occurring around the house. Were they
prepared for something so powerful? He raced
down the stairs and then back again into the room
to wake Woo. She started at his touch and took
his nervous hand. ee
‘<Calm down, Pinball... it is the storm... no
harm can come to us.”’
‘“‘No harm. . . that wind must be two hundred
kilometers by now... .”’
‘*1’m sure it is more but the house is protected
by force fields around the perimeter . . . . Kee will
have switched them on. . . the wind cannot get
through . . . it will play itself out within the hour.
Come, we will watch it from the veranda.”’
She led him out of the room and down the stairs
to the front. They stepped out.
The sensation was extraordinary for all the ef-
fects of a hurricane were there right before his eyes
 THE BLACK MOON - 51
and yet . . . out in the open as they were, the air
was as still as a bank vault.
“It’s amazing . . . do they happen often?’’
*“No... maybe once every few months.’’
“Is everything protected against them?’’
‘Everything of value, yes . . . all the buildings
and people. . . watch, it is calming for a moment
. . listen to the sounds as it calms... .”’
It dropped, the swishing bird-like noise drawing
closer and lower in pitch, ticking out a distinct
rhythm about the house. The multitude of varying
notes in the air was music . . . real music, in a
polyphonic effect, coming at them from all sides.
It tapped and burst forth and then backed off,
came forward again as though an aurora borealis
had found symphonies of expression instead of
colors. The air shifted for a moment across their
front and Woo leaned to one side, turned off the
current of the force field and led Pinball out on to
the rhythmic sand.
“*Is it safe? Will it not come again?’’
“Yes .. . it will come again but the risk is worth
FiSsten and feel . .. but do not go too far from
the house; be parcial not to forget what it is that
gives you this sound. . .’’
Her voice drifted as she moved slightly away
from him, her face enraptured by the incredible
sounds. Now they were at the center of it. Pinball
found himself captured also by the force of the
noise in his head. The winds were soft now, deli-
cate and wavering without apparent direction.
They came from all sides and blew across his face
and his naked body. The orchestra was at a dimin-
uendo, softening to his ears and fluffing all cares
from his brain. He cared little for anything . . . but
52 CABAL: Volume 2

to continue in this intoxicating place, surrounded

by the encompassing pleasure of it.
The sounds above his head took a quick dive
and surrounded him as though they came to say
hello, to beckon him away from the house like the
undertow of a heavy sea. He was carried willingly
down the beach and away from the house, to-
wards the sea. No thought of any peril entered his
mind... until a change came. Without warning
and more suddenly than the beginning, the storm
took on a new dimension. The sound rose like the
advancing of an army that marched towards him,
step by step in hundreds and thousands. Behind
the steps was the swooping sound again, coming
across and through the ranks each moment and
literally shoving his body towards the sea. He
could not stop himself. Suddenly, more suddenly
than he could think, he had no choice in the direc-
tion he took. It was like a crafty animal had en-
ticed him away from safety with offers of pleasure
and then once it knew there was no choice for him
it lost its smile and put on the pressure, forcing
him entirely against his will. He was terrified now.
He knew that the way he was being pushed was
towards the massive sea that began again to hurl
its effluent up onto the beach. The advancing
army of wind set up crashes of thunder and like
the sound of cymbals it beat at his body mer-
cilessly. He had to go... he had to go. . . there
was no other way. Now he was going to die.
The force built up to a roar so mighty that he
was bowled over and fell to the ground. The wind
actually scooped up his body like a giant hand
coming down and lifting him off the ground. He
rolled over and fell onto his back. The hand came
 THE BLACK MOON 53

down again, wishing to take up the body and give

itself the maximum surface to force against. He
was being thrown around uncontrollably . . . there
was no way out... dear God ...no way out...
then it stopped, suddenly drifting away as if it had
been called to another place, defeating itself,
though it could have won the war . . . quickly
gone. And before him stood Woo, her arms
spread wide above her head and her legs open,
sturdy to the ground, face held up, sweat pouring
from her forehead and over her shoulders,
drenching her whole naked body. As Pinball stood
again she collapsed to the ground. He stepped for-
ward and knelt beside her. ‘‘Carry me inside my
love, I need rest.’’
She was weak and lay back as Pinball picked her
tiny body from the ground and lifted her across
the sand without effort. He looked up at the sky
and watched the clouds in the dark night moving
away. The first of the two suns was just visible
across the sea and for the first time he was able to
identify a horizon. He carried her back to her
room.
‘‘Where did you find the strength to stop that
storm?’’ Pinball asked Woo, as she awoke from
her rest. i
‘**From all my people. . . all the children.’’
**All of them? They sent you strength?’’ Pinball
sat beside her on the wide bed where he had sat
since lieing her there.
“Yes ... we all have contact between our brains
and our thoughts. There are powers within all
humans that lie unidentified . . . it is so on Earth
too.’
‘*That is something we have not yet found.’’
54 CABAL; Volume 2

“Yes you have .. . a select number of you. I

have watched a young boy on Earth in your past
. he was able to do many things that we can do:
stop clocks, bend metal, produce matter out of
nowhere, make it disappear . . . these are all things
that are done through others on Earth who send
him the items he produces or take away those that
he sends out. All humans are connected by power
lines—waves of power that pass between them.
Your people will discover the source soon
enough.’’
‘‘And gather enough power to stop the wind.’’
‘‘That is difficult . . . a strength required of
many strong children.”’ /
‘*Are children stronger than adults?’’
‘‘Much stronger. Their power is untouched and
undiminished. Adults have reason and a super-
fluity of ‘misplaced logic. The world you have
come from would be better reversed . ... adult to
child and child to adult. The results would amaze
you.”’
‘“1’m sure they’d amaze the adults too.’’
Woo smiled and took his hand. is
‘I’m glad that you are unhurt. Your body is
strong... we are all pleased that you are unhurt.”’
‘‘Thank you...’’
‘*You will meet more of the children tomorrow
. . they are ready to gather and meet with you on
the beach. . . in the morning.”’
*“No, Woo.’’
‘*You hide your thoughts from me. . . you learn
tricks too fast... why no Woo?’’
‘*Because I have been thinking.”’
‘‘Think to me then. ”» She sat upright on the
bed.
 THE BLACK MOON 55

‘*T have to go back.’”

‘*Back to Earth?’’
euVes.2
‘*But why? It is madness to go back . . . I may
not be able to bring you here again.’’
**T do not wish that you should. I must go back
and find a cure in my own world or die there.”’
“‘Why? I do not understand . . . why die on
Earth and take millions with you?’’
“‘Because I do not believe it is all possible. I
believe that I am dreaming . . . nothing is real here
... not even you.”’
“Oh .. .’’ She dropped her head slightly,
leaning forward, her face dismayed.
“Don’t you see . . . all this is too much. The
jump across time, the horizonless sea, the Wall
. . . the secrets, the Mandroids, the Cancer and
now the storms. Nothing is real to me. I am
numbed and uncertain; I am dreaming, Woo... I
shall arrive back in that little room you took me
from and I shall wake up to find I have been
dreaming lovely, strange and nightmarish dreams
all rolled together. That is my life . . . I must
return to it... and you must help me.’’
**T will not.”’
“You must. If you love me the way you say you
do you must give me at least a chance.”’
“IT cannot Pinball, I cannot let you go; it is not
in me alone. I need the help of all my friends. . . I
cannot do it alone.”’
“Then explain it to them too . . . show them my
thoughts...”’
“‘They already have them.”’
“Then ask them to help me . . tell them that I
am not from Charybdis . . . 1am from Earth and
56 _ CABAL: Volume 2

here in a dream. Tell them that unless I get back to

Earth I will die in a dream and I need to die in
reality . . . in my own reality . . . with the people I
know and understand . . . tell them, Woo.”’
**You have told them.”’ te
“‘And what do they say?’’
There was silence for a moment and then Woo
held up her head again. The sun slipped over the
edge of the window sill and spilled its light into the
room.
‘“‘They say that you can go, on one condi-
tion...”’
‘“Which is?’’
‘*That if you need help . . . and cannot cope on
Earth, you will come back to the alley and return
here 4377
Pinball hesitated. This was all that he could
want but had determined to avoid. He felt himself
weak . . . yet, somehow too, if he refused his own
needs, that would weaken him further in the light
of his new life here.
He wanted to be here, but here was a dream and
he had to have the reality to try it against. He had
to see the filth of the real life he knew before he
could accept the dream as the new life he wanted.
**T accept.”’
‘*So be it.’? Woo lay back and slept. Pinball. lay
beside her, awake.
 CHAPTER FIVE

Turn and Turn Again

Pinball thought he was awake. He opened one

eye. Pinball thought maybe he was in a dream. He
opened the other eye. Pinball thought perhaps he
was going mad and maybe that he might have to
explain his madness to someone and they would
not believe him, they would think him sane.
He looked up at the ceiling, the cracks. He
turned towards the window, the curtains. He
wasn’t dreaming any more. He felt tears well up
into his eyes and run down the side of his high
cheeks, just a small number of tears. His mouth
was gummy as though he had been drinking last
night and his stomach was spitting up the muck.
He felt very very low. He felt that the pressure on
him was too much, that it would crush out all the
reserves he had always believed he possessed. He
had no conception of how he would ever escape

57
58 CABAL: Volume 2

from what he now saw as an impossible horror.

He did not want to get up. Somehow, perhaps,
if he stayed where he was and did nothing the
world would not bother him further and the
depression would get no worse. There was no real
hope of it going away but it might stay just like
this and he might become accustomed to it. He ©
could stay there until nightfall again and then
sleep and perhaps the next morning it would all be
bearable. :
No. It would not change. Why should it? He
wouldn’t change, he would only get worse.
Perhaps he didn’t have cancer. Perhaps his
small aching gut was from bad food or a change in
environment. Perhaps his dream of that other
world and time and Woo and Kee had been real
enough to his brain to make his stomach ache
from the very idea of having cancer. The dreamed
diagnostic clinic . . . that thing with the roaming
light, had told Kee the Mandroid that the cancer
had settled in his stomach. It was all psy-
chosomatic. Maybe if he went to see a doctor.
Maybe a doctor could make him realize the truth
of his imaginings without Pinball having to tell
him anything except . . . examine me. Yes. That
was the answer. He could simply say that he had a
bad stomach ache and would the doctor please...
no. That would not do. He was a wanted man on
Earth . . . here. The moment he stepped into a
clinic they would spot him and the doffers would
be around with their grab guns and he’d be in the
clink before he could shout.
He sank back into the pillow and resigned him-
self to death.
But . . . what about his pals? The Cabal. If he —
 THE BLACK MOON 59

could just get to Vandal or Weekold . . . or call up

Roatax. They’d help him. They’d grab a doctor
and bring him to Pinball and force him to give an
examination. That was it. That was what he’d do.
But how? How would he call up anyone or visit
anyone? The doffers would be out on the streets
looking for him. How? How?
Pinball’s agile, fastidious brain, revitalized by
the notion of help, sprang back into action. He sat
up on the bed and began to pace the room as he
used to. Planning was always his forte, had always
been his to command when the Cabal needed to
get to work on a heist. They always turned to him.
Now he would use his special talents for just one
very simple act . . . getting out of that place and in
_ touch with one of the others.
He knew the layout of Soho like his own palm.
The rooftops of this particular part were the only
ones that stood only ten storys above the ground.
To the north and south everything shot up sixty or
seventy floors but to the east and west for at least
ten blocks the buildings were still low because the
foundations were too weak to carry the weight,
and the London authorities couldn’t pull them
down because the inhabitants kicked up such a
fuss when they tried that they had given up the
unequal battle years ago. Since then the places had
grown older and filthier by the year, completely
neglected in the hope that eventually everyone
would be chased out by the rats and the authorities
would take over just as the houses fell down. In
the meantime there were advantages to Pinball.
- He climbed out onto the roof, seven storys
above his own floor, through a dim latched
opening. No one ever seemed to be in the flats, so
60 CABAL: Volume 2

no one poked a nose out to see what was hap-

pening outside their doors. They were invisible in
this place, unconcerned, sleeping off the days,
hoping that the next would be better like Pinball
nearly did.
It was still early. The dismal light was still misty
and shadows cast down by the rising sun behind
the tall skyscrapers was complete so that night
could still have been dominant. He looked to his
right and his left to see that there were no copters -
on patrol in the low sky. Everything was clear. He
lifted his tall body up onto the slates and began to
race with amazing agility over the connected
roofs. The labyrinth of different shapes and
heights traveled out before him the way he had
chosen. Small forgotten balconies leaned over
dead roof gardens. Dirty washing hung out on
lines that might have been strung up ten years ago
and left to rot. Old pigeon coops were empty ex-
cept for grimy feathers flapping in the still breeze,
and scraps of corrugated iron lay in traps for him
to crash over. But Pinball was energized, his body
sharp and his eyes keen. His brain was working
again. He never took a wrong step and moved like
a runner in pursuit. Soon he was at the far end of
the block and the next twenty or thirty houses
stretched out over a wide gap. He had to cross it
and he did . . . with one colossal leap, spanning
five meters. He just caught the edge of the
building and pulled himself up, without so much
as a scrape. Up again he began the run once more
until he spotted an open window to his left. He
stopped, glanced around him in the semi-dark and
saw there was no sign of life. In through the win-
dow and down onto the boarded floor. No one
 THE BLACK MOON 61

there. A door led out into a passage and again the

occupants were invisible. He walked stealthily to
the stairwell and began down.
A door opened in the passage below-and an old
man poked his head out. Pinball shrank back. The
old man shuffled out and crossed to a toilet on the
other side of the passage. Pinball darted down and
passed this floor to the one below. No sound. As
he had hoped there was a telephone booth on the
landing at the middle floor. He picked up the
receiver. It was an old machine with dirt-encrusted
push keys. He punched out the number he wanted
and shoved in a coin. The number rang. And rang.
There was no reply. Either Weekold was asleep or
drugged-dead. Pinball closed the contact and
lifted it again, punched out another number. It
rang.
**Hello?’’ came the voice, a female voice.
‘“Roatax?”’
**Pinball ... . where have you been. . . you’re
wanted.”’
“T know, I know... listen... don’t talk.”’
“I’m listening.”’
**T need a doctor.”’
‘Why, what’s the matter, are you hurt?”’
“Don’t ask questions .. . no time. . . I just
need a doctor . . . can you get me one. .
‘ssomehow?’’
“Well. ..1... yes, I guess so... where are
you?’’
‘*Just get a doctor... get one now... . anyhow,
get him out of bed and drag him out of his house
... anyhow .. . I don’t care only make sure he’s a
_ good one. . . the best.”’
‘Wow... you sure ask ’em don’t you... a
62 CABAL: Volume 2

man wanted by every doffer in the world and he

wants a surgeon general... O.K. . . . but where
do I take him?”’
‘*Bring him to Soho . . . number 15 Wardour
Street . . . third floor, flat five. Bring him tonight,
Roatax, for the sake of . . . of everything you hold
dear ... Idon’t have much time.. .”’
‘‘All right . . . what if I need to contact you...
how?’’
“You can’t . . . I’m way along the street in
another place . . . the doffers will get me if they
know where I am . . . I have to get back to my
place... it’s safe for atime. . . but not for long.”’
‘*But if they see me with a doctor coming to that
flat they’ll be on to you like a bunch of hungry
wolves...’’
“‘Doesn’t matter . . . I’ve got a way out... I
think . . . just get him there and don’t get seen.
Dress up or something . . . disguise yourself . . .
they don’t want you for the moment.”’
‘*They’ve been here. . . asking for you...”
‘Right . . . well . . . maybe they: won’t come
back for a while.’’
‘*It’s been tough, Pinball . . . they don’t leave us
alone for long...’’
‘Tknow...well...soon they’ll give up. ..’’
‘*You know better than that.”
“No .. . they’ll give up because I won’t be
around... then you’ll be safe. . . after that.’’
‘Hey... . what the hell are you up to. . . where
are you going that you can be safe from the
doffers . . . tell me . . . put me in on the secret
hiding-place...”’
“TI can’t, Roatax . .. there’s only room for
one...’ =
 THE BLACK MOON 63

“Oh, typical... .’’

“*Tisten you silly bitch . . . I’m the one they’re
after .. . they don’t want you... when I’m gone
they’ll leave you alone . . . you won’t need
anywhere to go... right?’’
She hesitated for a moment.
“Right . . . but if they find out I’ve helped you,
they’ll take me in spite ...”’
‘*Roatax, for Christ’s sake . . . what does it take
...I need help... badly . . . more than I’ve ever
done before . . . now how about it?’’
She hesitated again.
“O.K., I’ll be there within a couple of hours...
-I promise . . . go back and lie down. Relax. I
promise.”’
**Good. Bless you... it'll. . .’’ He stopped for
a second as he heard a sound above him. ‘‘It’ll be
nice to see you again.”’
“Yeah, sure... see you...’’ And she hung up
on that desultory note.
Pinball turned to see the old man standing
behind him with a large pistol held in both hands,
raised up to Pinball’s head.
‘*‘My God you were quiet . . .’’ Pinball said as
he raised one mighty foot and kicked the gun from
the old man’s hand. It flew into the air and went
off with an almighty boom. The old man
staggered back and Pinball raised a hand which
would have come down on the guy’s neck. But
Pinball repented for some reason. He did not
know why. What reason had he to let this old
fellow live? But he did. He took him by the collar
and turned him around gave him a sharp snap on
the back of the neck, enough only, with those
skilled fingers, to knock him senseless, and sped
 64 CABAL: Volume 2

up the stairs to the roof. As he reached the outside

he heard the noise downstairs as the invisible
inhabitants of Soho poured out for the event.
Within eight minutes he was back inside his
apartment room. He knew now that he had even
less time than before; that the doffers would begin
searching the blocks for the culprit and that even-
tually . . . certainly within the next twelve hours
they would reach his door and he had to be gone
somewhere else by then. But for the time being he"
could only wait and hope that Roatax was as good
as her word.
He sat down, took out the cigarettes that had
_ started all the trouble a day ago and lit one, his
hands shaking. An hour passed like ten days. The
second hour was closer to ten weeks but it went by
in the end. It was ten thirty in the morning when
he finally looked out of the window at the street.
The whole place was screaming with doffers.
They were running to and fro like hounds with the
smell of fox. In and out of the houses across and
down the way. They couldn’t be more than six
doors down and moving up his way very fast. Sud-
denly there was a bang at the door and scuffling
outside. Pinball jumped back into the room and
grabbed the pistol that he had so nearly blown his
own brains out with. He would take a dozen dof-
fers with him before they snapped his neck.
“It?s me... Roatax... Pinball... for Christ’s
sake open the door. . . quick.”
He opened it, ushering Roatax and a small,
round-headed, bald man beside her.
“‘Christ, what did you do... . blow up a fucking
bank . .. they’re all over the place . . .”’ She
pushed the little man roughly into the room and he
 THE BLACK Moon 65
staggered across to the chair and sat down without
so much as a word of complaint.
“Thank God . . . I was ready to fight it out.
‘Where’d you get him?’’
“Harley Street, of course . . . where’d you
think?’’
“What did you do. . . walk right in and grab
him?’’

“No... I went to surgery having made an ap-

pointment .. . told him I’d eat him if he didn’t
come with me and he came. ..”’
“T am a doctor, young man . . surprising
though it may seem, I am happy to help when
needed... . and it would seem, by the way I was
approached, that the help needed might be serious
. . . in any event it is not often I am offered the
alternative between cannibalism and_ sexual
deviation ....’’
“‘What did you say you’d do to him, Roatax?’’
- Pinball said as he lay down on the sofa.
“TsaidI’d...”’
“She offered me the chance . . . either to be
eaten alive . . . which, looking at her, I believe...
ora... blow job and spanner as she put it .. .”’
“God... you really do care. . .’’ Pinball jibed
_ Roatax as she ushered the old doctor to his side.
“Well... in for a penny... .’’ She looked
faintly embarrassed which brought a smile to Pin-
ball’s lips.
“Well, young man, what’s wrong with you?”’
“‘That’s your job, Doc... . 1hope you brought
your diagnostic box of tricks... .’’
_ “JT did. Aren’t you even going to give me a hint
_... after all it would seem that the police will not
belong incoming...’’
66 CABAL: Volume 2

‘In that case get a move on or I’ll chuck you

out of the window.”’
““Dear, oh dear. . . one offer after another...
very well. . . lie back and relax.’’
The doctor took out one of the most modern.
pieces of equipment available to the medical
profession at the time. . . a ‘‘diagnostic wand,”’ as
they were nicknamed. It was capable of digging
out the problem and giving at least a superficial
certainty to the doctor who could then investigate
further with more comprehensive equipment. For
the purposes of the present predicament it suf-
ficed. ;
The doctor waved it closely over Pinball’s body,
starting from the head and working down his
body, hesitating at his stomach, moving to his feet
and then returning to his stomach. Then he stood
up, pulled at his back muscles and moved away.
He sat in the chair.
‘*Well?’’ Pinball almost shouted.
“I wish I had never come here,’’ the doctor
said.
‘‘What is it?’’ Roatax turned, also backing off
from Pinball’s body, suddenly feeling the tension
that came from the doctor who, on the whole,
looked like the sort of guy that had seen all there
was to see in the way of diseases and nastiness, yet
on this occasion was evidently impressed’ by
whatever it was that he found in Pinball’s gut.
‘*You have a particularly virulent form of can-
cer that I have never come across before. It is ac-
tually eating away at the cells in your body at such
a rate that I would predict you have some three or
four months to live at the outside.”’
 THE BLACK MOON 67

“Christ . . .’” Roatax’s face went white and she

leaned against the door.
‘*In addition to this the virus is contagious... .
I already have contracted it . . . your friend here
may also have done.”’
“How do you know you’ve got it?’’ Roatax
asked, almost in a state of panic. Cancer was still
the one disease to have defeated mankind on earth
in the late 2400s.
“Tl waved the diagnostic wand about my own
body for a second or two. The cells of cancer have
already passed to me. I shall be dead for this act of
kindness within a year. You must be isolated, my
friend, or the entire population of London will
have cancer . . . this cancer within a few days. ..’’
He jumped out of his seat and dashed for the
window. Leaning out of the open sash before even
Pinball could get to him, he called out with one
huge bellow . . . to the doffers below.
“‘Get up here. . .’’ he said, and then with one
mighty heave Pinball shoved his small body
through the gap in the window and he toppled
three floors to his death, one year sooner than was
intended.
*“Get out, Roatax ... get out .. . you’re still
safe .. . get out of the country and take the others
with you . . . as fast as youccan. . . this disease will
be all over the place . . . like he says within a few
days...’’
“You... you knew... . you: knew you had it
and yet you... you phoned me... .’’ Her voice
had risen like a foghorn . ... she shouted across the
room as though she would kill him with every
_ word...
68 CABAL: Volume 2

‘*Get out, for hell’s sake, get out . . . I’ve got to

go...now.”’
“No... I won’t let you kill thousands of people
. .. Not even you... not even these people... I
won’t let you...”’
She rushed across the room to the table and
grabbed at the pistol Pinball had put down. With
one upsweep of her strong right wrist she brought
the weapon to play and pressed the trigger. A
single blast of red hot flame shot from the barrel
and seared across the dreadful room. It caught
Pinball as he darted sideways and took off his
weak hand. It burned his gammy arm right up to
the elbow, with the heavy blast. Before she could
let fly with a more lethal shot he had moved.
Disregarding the ghastly pain in his arm he swept
the pistol from her hand and clouted her across
the head. She reeled sideways and cracked. her
forehead on the wall, bounced off and hit Pinball
on the rebound as he left the room. The force of
the bounce knocked her back again to the wall and
she would have died on impact for the mantel was
neatly placed in her path. But Pinball had stopped
and put out his powerful left hand to catch her in-
voluntary movement, flying in the hands of forces
that she could not hope to control.
‘“‘“God, Roatax, believe me . . . I would never
have wished such a thing on you. . .”” He lowered
her to the ground and bounded from the room. He
held the blaster now, but with that hand he also
clutched the broken and burned arm. There were
doffers coming up the stairwell. Pinball made for
the roof again. He fired three blasts down the
stairs and sent five doffers to hell.
Once on the roof he moved only one house
 THE BLACK MOON 69

down. Dropped through a broken skylight and

knocked a man sideways who stood bravely in his
path. Down the stairs. The doffers were reacting
* in their usual moronic fashion, and his way was
clear almost to the bottom. Just as he went for the ~
front door it opened and they burst in. None of
them was holding a blaster yet, but the moment
they saw him they went for their holsters like
‘cowboys in a raging saloon fight. Pinball wasted
no timein heroics but burned off the hands that
went for the guns and heaved the doffers clear of
his path.
Out in the street the chaos helped him. There
were at least a hundred doffers in the various en-
trances to Wardour Street. Pinball sprayed the
whole area with fire and heat, sending them scut-
tling or dead across the way. He knew where he
had to head and he went like a football player to
the touchdown. The alleyway was only twenty
meters away. Doffer after doffer aimed a shot at
him and each in their turn for whatever reason
missed completely.
He made it to the alley and was down it. At the
far end was a doffer with a raised blaster and
behind Pinball at the entrance to the alley was
another in the same stance. Pinball saw the sea.
He raced with every ounce of strength left in his
body. The blasters were set, the contacts closed,
the fire spurting down the narrow street. Pinball
was at the center of two blasts of death that closed
to within two meters of both sides of his head,
front and back. But he leaped high and long and
was gone... vanished from hell. . . to the beach.

___ Pinball sat upright on the sand. So. Which was the
70 CABAL: Volume 2

dream? Then he felt the pain in his arm. It caught

him unawares, like something had come up and
burned it off just at that moment. It was so deeply
painful that he felt dizzy. He lay back on the sand
and that made it worse. He stood up and held the
stub which had sealed off the end with the heat of
the blaster’s fire. He stumbled off in the direction
of the house, wanting Woo his comforter, to heal
that terrible wound. The ache seemed to get worse
. . the blood was cut off, there was no return
flow through the veins, his arm would simply
wither and die and maybe it would affect other
parts of his body. He began to run. Once up the
stairs he banged on the door hard with his strong
arm and clutched the dying one periodically to
give some rest to the dreadful soreness.
The door opened.
‘*Pinball?’’ Kee stood in the opening. ‘‘We were
not sure when you would return.”’
‘Is Woo here?”’
‘““No, she has returned to her home in the oly
. you have been away a long time, Pinball . .
your arm, what have you done to it?”’
Kee’s voice was more or less calm though
perhaps with a note of surprise.
**A long time? I’ve only been a few hours. . .
twelve at the most.’’
“No . . . you have been gone over six
months...’’
‘‘Six months!’’ He was incredulous. ‘‘That’s
impossible . . . I left only a day ago. . . through
some magic that Woo arranged.”’
“‘Then you have traveled through some unex-
plained magic as well as through the worlds
beside.. You have lost time Pinball . . . one of the
 THE BLACK MOON 71

dangers of messing with it. You are fortunate it

was not six years or sixty years . . . even six
thousand years . . . you would have found nothing
here by then perhaps...’
““My God .. . is Woo all right?”””
“‘Of course . . . she is six months pregnant with
your child.”’
“<So, it worked.’’
““Yes, it worked.’’ Kee almost smiled.
“And the fetus, have they examined the
genes?’’
“‘No, they will not. I have not even suggested
the idea to them yet. Let the child be born well and
strong first . . . let time take a while to give the
birth properly. If the scientists on this planet
believe there is some reason for them to start
delving into Woo’s belly they will give her no
peace. This child is special . . . perhaps the first of
many.’’
“You are wise . . . you old robot... . I need
sleep . . . may I stay here, then perhaps in the
morning we can go and visit her.’’ ;
*“Of course . . . you are welcome here, but your
arm will not last, I’m afraid, that long. You need
treatment . . . indeed I think it is the moment for
you to accept that new arm I offered some months
ago.”’
“‘Can’t I sleep? . . . my head hurts and my
stomach too...”’
Pinball broke off the sentence in mid flow and
slowly turned to look up at Kee... ‘“My God...
six months. . . does that mean?”’
“‘Yes, I’m afraid so . . . you are nearing the
SETcon Pinball . . . your cancer will have moved
_ with the times, I’m afraid...”
72 CABAL: Volume 2

“Oh, God . . . I really did blow it . . . just for

my own selfish fancy, I miss the best months of
Woo’s pregnancy, I do some terrible damage to
my own planet and I come back to find I’ve lost
most of the rest of my own life too. ..”’
‘‘And Woo’s. . . she too is due to face the SET-
con within a few weeks of the birth. ..””
‘*But she’s only six months gone!’
‘*Her term will be just that of all other children
on Charybdis, six and one half of your months.”’
“I see . . . so I must pay the price of my
privilege.”’ =
‘“Indeed:). .””
Pinball sat down in the room they had walked
to. It was night again. He could not really believe
that for his own thoughts and for the time he felt
he had passed everything had happened between
two nights by the hours on Charybdis. No more
than 34 hours had put him from where he had
begun with a pistol at his head and now, preparing
for the idea of dying anyway . . . or almost so. He
bowed his head forward.
“‘Tell me, Kee . . . one thing before we go.. .”’
He said it without mentioning it.
“If I can... though you plan to speak I think
on something your mind considers worthy of
hiding .. .”’
‘*What is on the other side of the Wall?”’
Kee was silent. He sat down opposite Pinball
who remained with his head in the shadows.
“I do not know... is the truth. . . none of us
really knows.”’
‘I have been thinking . . .’’ Pinball sat up
slightly, feeling the weakness in his body etching
away at his thoughts and making the tiredness
 THE BLACK MOON 73

irrepressible. ‘‘If you Mandroids have human

brains and human eyes then you must have done
one of two things. You must either have found a
way of preserving human tissue forever, in which
case you would be able to preserve the entire body
in the same way... or... once the brain and the
eye atrophy with age as all human tissue does, you
must become androids. . . the dropping of the ‘M’
which you seem to regard with some strange
sanctity.”’
**Your deduction is correct,’’ Kee said quietly.
“If that is so. . . where are all the Androids?’’
Kee said nothing for a long time. His face
remained expressionless even though Pinball
stared hard at it. He did not move at all but simply
sat there.
“You have been on this planet, you said your-
self, for fifty years . . . in that time hundreds,
thousands of Mandroids must have ‘died’. So...
why don’t I see lots of your dead Mandroids
walking around or manning the machines or
something? I have not seen any of them,
anywhere.”’
Kee was still silent for a while. Then he spoke
deliberately and somberly.
‘‘We banish them . . . over the Wall. . . or
rather .. . under it.”’
‘‘And they simply go their own way and you
never see them again?’’
‘*That is so.”’
‘But .. . has it never occurred to anyone here
. on this side of the Wall that they must be
gathered there on the other side in thousands?’’
“Of course it has, but we protect our humanidy
like you protect your delicate logic. We choose not
74 CABAL: Volume 2

to think of the consequences of our extinction . .

the death of humanidy is epitomized by the An-
droid. The Android is the result of the final death
of humankind. Child, Mandroid . . . Android. We
do not wish to know. In any case this is a massive
planet . . . we can afford not to think of the An-
droids . . . of what happens on the other side of
the Wall . . . there is enough space to ac-
commodate a billion Androids before they will
overflow back here . . . in that time we will be ex- _
tinct. ..unless...”’
‘*Unless Woo’s child has no cancer.’’
‘*Exactly.”’
*‘And none of your fellow councillors are even
willing to countenance that . . . they close their
minds to everything?’’
‘‘They have learned not to hope . . . hope is
painful . . . dangerous, it carries its own weights
and it brings only disappointment.’’
‘*That’s terrible . . . that’s the beginning of ex-
tinction.’ :
““Yes .. . you are right. That is why Woo and I
brought you here . . . because she is a child... a
very gifted child . . . she has hope and strength and
the power to see it through . . . before becoming a
Mandroid.”’
‘*Will I lose hope when I become a Mandroid?’’
‘‘Perhaps some. . . but you have been human
for longer than most who go through the SETcon
needles . . . a lot of that will survive, you are
strong too... willful. . . you have the strength to
give us the benefit of your longer humanness. I’m
sure that you will quickly become a councillor and
a powerful influence in some of the changes that
 THE BLACK MOON 75

will take place on Charybdis.’’

‘*And then I will be sent over the Wall. .. to
live out an eternity of mechanical memories in a
wilderness of dead men.. .’’
Kee was silent.
Pinball had never considered the true impact.
**I have no choice in the matter unless I take my
life now. I cannot take my life now because I owe
it to Woo and the other Mandroids to see through
my half-life . . . my 10% life as a Mandroid. Then
I pay the price for not dying . . . . Christ, what
kind of hell is that? For being a hero I must suffer
in hell for ever? I don’t believe it, Kee. . . and you
too and her . . . the child Woo. . . she too will go
over the Wall one day . . . and we won’t love
anymore... never love... never know... have
no brain, no feeling . . . just a set of valves... .’’
““You will not love even once the SETcon has
set its needles upon you. Not in the way you do
now.”’
Pinball was stunned into complete silence. He
had spent so much time catching up with the first
shock of the last 34 hours that he had given no
thought at all to the details of what he faced. No
love, no sex. The one strong force that had been
with him since he could remember was about to be
taken away. As he tried to reason, to rationalize
the situation and find even an ounce of optimism
he felt a terrible, drenching faintness pass over his
head. It engulfed him in a few seconds and he fell
headlong onto the floor, out into darkness.

He woke, lying on his back, in semi-darkness.

There was a light high above his head, towards the
76 CABAL: Volume 2

right of his body and in the middle section. He

tried to lift his head but could not. Kee moved
over to him and spoke.
‘‘Woken up already? I must not have given you
enough sleeper drug. Still . . . it?s done.’
‘‘Whaaat . . . what’s done?’’ Pinball’s mouth
was sticky and the muscles didn’t work properly.
‘*Your arm... I’ve given you a new one... . try
to lift it... your right arm . . . come on. . . use
the muscle.’’
Pinball, with a huge effort. of will, flexed —
muscles that he had never known were there. He
felt as though nothing was happening but he
looked towards where he would have expected to
see the weak arm had he applied all his strength to
lift it. There, right before his face was a long,
muscled, perfectly shaped arm, clothed in blue
material from shoulder to wrist. The bicep was
big, the elbow area rounded and the forearm firm
and strong. ‘The wrist was thick and looked power-
ful, the fingers were long and tapered, spatulate,
like his other hand. There were no fingernails, the
tops of the digits tapering off into slightly flat-
tened surfaces. He used the muscles again and the
fingers moved . . . actually moved . . . sprightly
and easily . . . he did it again. He felt like some TV
hero... like some freak. Poa
‘Good God... it works.”’
‘““Of course it works... . I’ll have you know
that you have been treated by one of the best doc-
tors of bionic surgery on Charybdis.’’
‘‘Hey . . . what about the rest?’’ Pinball lifted
his body with the impetus of sudden panic, to look
and see if anything else had been replaced. But
every other part of his body was intact.
 N

THE BLACK MOON 77

“Don’t worry, the time is not quite here for you

to lose the rest . . . and anyway I could not do it
properly . . . not without nearly a week of contin-
uous surgery and masses of fancy equipment. But
I can replace an arm. I had them bring me the
right material from the SETcon after you col-
lapsed. The veins and arteries in your arm were
broken and the blood wasn’t getting anywhere so I
had to begin quickly.’’
Kee looked faintly pleased with himself.
**Can I get up now?’’
“*Yes, but slowly, you may find a slight dizzi-
ness after the anesthetic.’’
Pinball turned off the couch and stood. He did
feel dizzy but it passed after a minute. He moved
the arm again, still feeling like someone who gets
on a static escalator, prepared for a different
movement from the one he gets. The slightest
muscular effort lifted the arm far further than he
imagined it would. The weak arm that had been
with him since birth had built up a set of physical
responses that he now had to unlearn entirely. He
swung the limb ambitiously and almost knocked
Kee over.
“Careful, you will sine to get used to it before
you try too much of that.’
“IT suppose you’d regard this as a orale
teach-in for the SETcon?’’ Pinball remarked as he
_ paced up and down the room swinging the new
arm like a soldier on duty.
“‘Oh, no. This is a new arm, not a new body.
Your brain has only to adjust to the idea of
dealing with a small set of new muscles and a
stronger limb. The SETcon takes away everything
. . everything, Pinball. Your brain will undergo
78 CABAL: Volume 2

shock after the SETcon because it will still think it

has all the parts that it has been controlling all its
life. When it finally begins to realize some small
part of what has happened it will collapse for a
while . . . you will become comatose . . . we have
various forms of treatment for the state when it
applies to children because they have lived with
the idea of becoming Mandroid since very young,
but you... you are a different matter . . . your
responses will be more severe.’’ Kee paused as he
saw the reaction in Pinball’s face. But he con-
tinued unabashed.
“It is better that you should know before,
however. I cannot safely pad you against what has
to come. I have made elaborate changes in the
post-SETcon treatment therapy, just for you. I
believe it will help, but you must face the fact now
that your life will alter completely . . . there will be
nothing like now, nothing with which to compare
your future state to your present.’’ He paused
again and sat down opposite where Pinball had
slumped into a seat. The light was dim in his
laboratory and the shadows cut across bleached
sunlight that slipped through thin shutters on the
windows. Slight flows of dust whirled in the light
as the two occupants of the room moved around.
‘*Can you imagine what it is like to wake up in a
bed and know in your memory that you have been
deprived of the whole of your body? Just try to
think about it. I can remember that portion of my
life as though it were happening now. It was like
being born again, like just slithering out into a
nasty hell of a world where I knew nothing and all
my responses were alien. There was no one there. I
lay alone on a bed that I could not really feel at all.
 THE BLACK MOON 79

My body was straight, laid out on the bed and my

arms were down by my sides. I could feel my arms
and legs and my stomach and my penis and my
head and everything that had gone. I could feel
them all there on the bed but I knew that they
weren’t there at all.
““This was the dichotomy. I knew because I had
built up to it with all the training and warning and
teaching of the pre-SETcon school that all the
young go through for two years before the
needles. But I didn’t believe it.
“Did you ever wake up in a room and because it
was too dark you thought maybe you were
somewhere else? You thought you were in a place
that was familiar and even after you had reor-
ganized your ideas enough to rationalize that you
weren’t there, your brain still did not know where
you actually lay. You couldn’t be sure that the
door was where it should be, or that there was a
window where you had thought it might be. You
could even raise your head and look around and
for a moment there was nothing familiar.
‘‘Well, that was the way it felt, except that all
this was happening, this was all real, not a dream
but a living nightmare. I kept looking at my body
for signs. It was looking into the little corners for
the familiar signs, the small things that would
reassure it that everything was intact. At first it
would find them and it would lie back and say
‘that’s O.K., everything present and correct...
all accounted for.’ Then it would doubt again
because the feeling was not quite correct after all.
It would do a more thorough search and this time
the results would not be so positive. Then it would
panic and shock waves would bounce around in-
80 CABAL: Volume 2

side the head because there was nowhere else for

them to go. The Mandroid brain controls the
physical movements, the human brain that is left
has very little to do with anything but thinking. . .
it becomes a philosopher after a while, shedding
all its physiological duties and being left with an
internal, isolated life-form. Like a pure island,
with only itself to worry about. All the body parts
become independent of it; don’t need it anymore,
even gang up a little against its alienness. They
outnumber it you see, leave it to cope alone.”’ Kee
stopped for a moment as though he contemplated
the loneliness. He sat back like an old man in the
chair, his huge hands resting upon the sides. ‘‘As a
comforter the brain sends out a kind of aura, or so
we have found. Once the SETcon needles have
shed everything and replaced it with new,
sparkling, dead components, so the human brain
retraces the shape of the body as though it wanted
the memory. The most remarkable thing is that
the body actually grows. The ghost lives on and
forms into manhood as it would have done were it
still there.’ He paused. ‘‘It’s blue.’? Again he
paused, thoughtfully. ‘‘Blue . . . a fluorescent
blue. Perhaps that’s why we all wear blue
clothes.’? He seemed not to have thought of this-
before. Pinball watched him, leaning back in the
chair, fascinated by the confessions and the in-
timacies of thought that issued from a creature
who could barely be called human . . . but that
spoke in entirely human ways.
‘‘That aura remains until we . . . until we die.
Once the brain and the eye are atrophied, so the
aura dies too. The first change in old Mandroids is
that the eye closes up. They go slightly blind and
 THE BLACK MOON 81

begin to miss their step. Then everyone knows that

they are close to the end. Next the eye becomes
gummy and dirty and no longer cleans itself
properly; like a dying animal it begins to fester
and stays shut in order to protect itself against fur-
ther irritation. Finally it goes gray and then you
can be fairly sure that the brain is going too. The
light shuts out.’’ He sat forward and addressed
himself to the air, seeming not to see Pinball at all.
“*T had a friend once, an old Mandroid who had
adopted me much like I have adopted Woo, as a
child. I lived, often in his home on his estates and
we talked for hours, sometimes through the night.
He would tell me of his dreads and his fears. His
greatest fear was not recognizing the coming of
the end. He feared that he would accept it without
care because his brain was senile. Then one day he
began to complain of itchiness in that one eye. He
was always grumbling to me that he couldn’t put
up his hand and rub away the itch. He even tried
to persuade me once to open the glass casing that
covers all the Mandroid eyes. Of course I could
not, even had I wanted to, because the whole head
cavity is sealed off during the SETcon.
“‘Then, a few weeks later he began to stumble
around the place, knocking into things, bumping
his head on light fixtures on the walls, cursing like
an old trooper. Eventually I sat with him one night
and he spoke to me of it. He said... . ‘Kee I think I
am losing the sight of my eye.’ I listened to him
and watched him, knowing that it was true. I
cried. I was still only a boy of no more than thir-
teen years and I cried. He squinted his creased eye
and looked across at me. He said. . . ‘I wish I
could do that . . . I wish I could cry.’ It went on
82 CABAL: Volume 2

for several more weeks, his blundering getting

worse and worse until he couldn’t see properly at
all and he had to switch permanently to his Man-
droid eye . . . or his android eye. You see, the
older we Mandroids get the less we like to admit
that we need the android eye. When we’re young
like I am now we use it a lot because at our age we
feel, wrongly, incidentally, that not using the
human eye is somehow resting it and that we will
live longer that way. Of course this is entirely
erroneous for aging continues, sometimes even
more rapidly if a muscle is not used.’’ He paused
once more and turned to Pinball for the first time.
‘*Then he changed. Suddenly, almost over one
night he altered. His eye shut altogether and went
gray. I can remember looking at it once and seeing
the discolorations, the striations of grayness and
death in it. Pinball . . . he was dead. His brain and
his eye were dead. His humanidy had collapsed
completely and yet he continued to walk about,
doing all the things that he always did. . . but
dead .. . not living . . . without any form of life
left in his . . . body. He treated me well, spoke
with me, even laughed slightly sometimes, walking
along the tracks that criss-crossed his estates. We
went into the city together as we had always done
before and he went off on his various activities.
The only difference was that he seemed to. avoid
other Mandroids. He didn’t want contact with
them directly as though he knew that as soon as
they knew he was dropping the ‘M’ they wouid
kick him out. This mattered to him still, even
though he had lost the humanidy responses. Then
one night, the night before they came and took
him off, he sat down with me and we talked a
 THE BLACK MOON 83
little. I asked him a question. I asked him whether
he could see. I meant ‘see’ like a sorcerer sees, like
a man sees inside himself . . . like a magician sees
when he travels on the planes. And do you know
what he said? He said that the light had gone.
That there was no light anymore and that he could
remember it and missed it.’’
Kee paused for a long time, looking away from
Pinball once more.
“The light goes out, Pinball. From inside, the
light goes out and yet you have to go on living.’’
‘“What happened to him then?’’ Pinball asked,
knowing the answer.
““He was taken away like they all are and sent
through the Wall, where they send them .. . from
the Wall station on the subway . . . under the Wall
to who knows where.”’
There was silence for a long while and Kee sat,
still contemplating his old Mandroid friend.
“The light . . . the seeing that we retain from
childhood . . . all those powers that Woo has,
powers to travel through time and on the astral
planes, powers to read other people’s thoughts,
powers of sorcery and poltergeists as you would
call them, powers to ‘see’. They disappear. We
become blind .. . and then it ends.’’ Suddenly he
straightened up as though only just realizing that
his intimacy with Pinball perhaps was slightly
mistaken, that he should have retained his aloof-
ness.
*‘So you understand perhaps what we dread.
We find now that the only cure for our cancer is to
strip our bodies from their bones and then to
destroy the bones too. To replace all that with all
this.”’ He indicated his body. ‘‘We do that
84 CABAL: Volume 2

knowing there is no other way for the moment and

we don’t look forward. We, each of us refuse to
think too hard of the future. You won’t find many
other Mandroids talking like I just have. They
dismiss it like your people dismiss death . . . until
they approach the end and then they start to go to
church and pray and think of God and swear for
all sorts of crazy reasons that they KNOW there is
heaven and a life hereafter. They know that some
beneficent God is going to take them up in his
hand and forgive all their faults and their crimes
to Him. They know all this, they believe . . . but
only just before the end. We are the same. We
think little or nothing of the dropping of the ‘M’
until we approach it . . . we go on producing
robots from our children and we discard the guilt
by saying we have no choice, like a parent telling
its child that it is for his own good . . . we do this
over and over again without thought for the actual
future.’’
‘*Which is what?’’
‘Eventual extinction of course. The population
of the young is slowly diminishing each decade.
Somehow nature is putting pressure on our race
now to finish because she can no longer justify us
in the universe. Our God has washed his hands of
us because there is not enough humanidy to keep
us in his mind. There is nothing we can do about
it. We try everything. We have even given our
young fertility drugs and bred them on training
calculated to increase their sexual output, but
nothing works. Each year the population growth
declines.’’
‘“How long have you got?’’ Pinball asked.
“Oh, maybe five or six hundred years. By then
 THE BLACK MOON 85

there will be no more than fifty or sixty children

born each year and it won’t be enough. That will
be the end... unless.”’
‘Unless Woo gives birth to a cancerless child.’’
“Yes. And even then it will be a problem be-
cause that child will have to be isolated from her
body and from the rest of the Mandroids for the
whole of its life and its children’s life and their
children until there is a strong enough strain. It
will mean keeping the new children away from the
rest of the community for... well. . . forever, un-
til the complete process of reproduction has
cleaned out all the cancer children and their an-
cestors. I have not even begun to imagine how we
shall achieve such a thing.”’
**At least the first step has been taken.’’
Kee smiled slightly at Pinball’s attempt at
reassurance. ‘‘You are a kind man, Pinball ...a
most suitable partner for Woo. Which reminds me
. . . we must go and see her. She has been sending
me telepathic messages around the clock to bring
you to the hospital . . . I cannot ignore her any
longer now that you are whole again.”’
Pinball left the beachside house with Kee, his
head brimming with uncertainty, but somewhere
in there was a note of possible hope, just a feeling
that maybe. . . just maybe.
 CHAPTER SIX

Woochild

Woo lay wide awake amid a tangle of tubes and

plastic. Her face was shining and bright, a little
whiter than usual, for she had been in that hos-
pital bed, attended by Mandroids, for almost a
month now. She knew that Pinball was on his way
with Kee to see her and she felt happy again for
the first time in a very long while. She knew too
that Pinball’s arm had been replaced and that
made her curiously happy. It was a kind of af-
firmation of his permanence in her life on
Charybdis. He had had his fling and discovered
that Earth was no longer his home, and now he
was back again for all time.
Soon, of course, too, there would be their child.
A human child entirely clean from cancer. A
unique child that she and he had produced to-
gether. Pinball had told her of all the children and

87
 88 CABAL: Volume 2

wives and women that he had lived through on

Earth but none of them could possibly compare or
stand before her and the child she would give birth
to. This was something completely special. It was
also special to the Mandroids, who regarded the
whole business with a mixture of suspicion and
delight. They would come around, the Mandroids
who took a special interest in the bright and happy
Woo, and they would coo and buzz about her
plump and burgeoning body like fathers about
their women. She had more than thirty visitors a
day and the nurses were turning them away in
droves, telling their eager robotic faces that Woo
must have her rest now . . . it would not be long-
before they could stand outside a screened iso-
lation room and look at the child itself.
That brought a pang of doubt and fear into
Woo’s otherwise positive thoughts. She knew that
even now the fetus was isolated by incredibly
complex systems from the rest of her body and
was being fed by her via decontamination units.
Once it was born they would take it away covered
in plastic balloons, and they would not let her
within a meter of it from then on. She would never
be allowed to cuddle the tiny form in her arms or
feed it from her breasts which were now so full
_ and heavy. She had to make the supreme maternal
sacrifice of letting her child go; a sacrifice for
which her mind was prepared but her body was
not. The Mandroids knew it was for their future,
and hers of course, for she would be one of them
before too long. It would only be a month after
she had given birth and the SETcon would take
her, breasts too.
All this, in her presently elated frame of mind,
 THE BLACK MOON 89

was easily accepted. Later it would not be so

simple.
Pinball and Kee walked in through the door.
Pinball hesitated at the entrance. It was not so
much that he was shocked at the sight of her
‘strapped up and full of holes, but somehow the
scene leaked. There were things that should have
been missing. On one side of his thoughts and the
reception of what he saw, it seemed as though he
were still in familiar territory, visiting a patient in
an ordinary hospital on Earth in his own time,
with all the trappings. On the other side he knew
he was in no such place doing no such thing. But it
was familiar, it was acceptable. He was in a hos-
pital, doing just that, visiting someone, a patient,
in a hospital. It was the first time he had done
something on this strange planet that tied in with
his own background and his own knowledge.
All this passed through his mind in a second,
_ and of course Woo picked it up and needed no ex-
planation.
‘‘Hello.”’
**Oh, dear,’’ Pinball said.
‘‘Hm. Well. . . I suppose I had better go,’’ Kee
muttered, almost as though he might have been
embarrassed.
“*You sound like a cheap American movie,’’
Pinball said, as he watched the big Mandroid back
' out of the room.
“Sometime you must tell me about othe
things,’’ Kee io as he left.
“Well. ..so...’’ Pinball stuttered, uncertain
and as yet net‘pack into familiarity with this small
girl. She laughed up at him, raising her head back
so that the beautiful contours of her features were
90 CABAL: Volume 2

thrust up towards his lowered head.

He bent over her and kissed her forehead.
“You are so human . . . so very human .. . it’s
so wonderful to be with you again ...solong...
it’s been so long...’
“Yes. I’m sorry .. . [had not intended . .’’
**Nlo.”’

‘TI wish . . . more than anything I can ever

remember having wished, that I had never
Testis
*“Oh, now come . . . you had a reason for
leaving . . . you had to leave . . . it is only un- .
fortunate that I was unable to control the timing
of it all. I still have much to learn.”’
‘‘T haven’t . . . I’ve learned all I want to. I’m
here to stay now.”’
**Yes. I don’t think you have much choice in the -
matter . . . you can’t go around spreading disease
in too many worlds, after all.’’
They paused, looking at one another closely.
Pinball allowed his eyes to run down her body,
over the huge hump in her belly and on around the
many pipes and tubes that seemed to run in and
out of her like the inside of a telephone exchange.
Her feet were bare at the bottom of the bed and
as he looked at them he saw how small they were.
The rest of her body was blown up, larger than
life, This was still a child, only sixteen years old
and the pregnancy made her look so_ full-
blown . . . though even in that she retained ele-
gance.
‘*T hear you were very lucky to get back at all,”’
she said, more for want of something to say.
‘*Did they overlook my progress?’’ i
 THE BLACK MOON 91

“‘Oh, yes. Kee had his beady eye on you all the
time . . . had you only known there wasn’t much
danger to you. . . not really—he had plans to
whip you out at a moment’s notice . . . but they
made him see it out...”’
‘*Who’s they?’’
‘The councillors. You’re not supposed to
meddle, you see . . . you’re supposed to let things
take their natural course or you mess up all kinds
of awkward things.’’
‘*But I already did that. . . I left the bloody can-
cer behind...”’
**Yes .. . but that could have been part of the
course...”’
‘I don’t understand and I don’t want to...
let’s talk about nicer things . . . when do you get to
give birth to this little . . . big thing?’”’
“This is not a thing, Pinball,’’ she chastised him
gently. ‘‘This is our son... a boy... a non-
cancer-carrying boy who will give us all a future.’’
**Yes, Kee’s been telling me about our future.’’
*<Oh, you don’t want to listen to him too much;
he loves to tell scary tales of horror and hell.
We’ve got at least ninety years together . . . ninety
years of togetherness and after that . . . well, I’ll
make sure that I drop the ‘M’ at the same time as
you and we’ll take that long winding road under
the Wall together ..
‘‘Hah... what a iach ... just like old Raion
. just like old couples.’’ He sat back in the
chair.
“It won’t be long . . . after the birth I shall be
up and around for a month or so before the SET-
con... we'll have a hell of a good time for a
92 CABAL: Volume2
month and then... well . . . we'll sit in our
armchairs on the Labrie oteour r estates and talk
out the memories .
“Yeah, we'll ently have to do the town that
month, give us plenty of memories to talk over...
and what’s this about estates?”’ _
**Oh, Kee didn’t tell you?’’ Pinball nodded no.
‘‘Well . . . he’s managed to get us an estate of our
own, bordering the seas . . . not too far from his
. in fact I believe it’s part of his estates. He
owns too much land already and I think he’s given
a large chunk to us. . . live out our lives in the lap
of luxury... andthere’sahouse...”’
‘*My goodness, they are doing us proud.’’ Pin-
ball tucked his hand carefully under the flap of the
bedclothes at the side of the bed and wrapped it
over his stomach, pressing hard.
“*Kee’s done a beautiful job on your arm, my
love ...let’ssee...holdit up.”’
Pinball pulled the muscle on the other arm and
helt it high up, his face twitching slightly .. .
desperately trying to hide what was streaking
through his brain.
‘‘Beautif . .. Pinball... Pinball... what .
not yet please. Not yet... please. . .”’
Pinball stood up briefly, clutching his stomach
with both hands, holding as tight as he could,
pressing the new hand over the hurt, pressing so
hard that he almost pushed through the clothes to
the flesh. He tilted forward, tried to stop the fall
over the bed and the pipes and wires that covered
Woo, put out a hand, caught Woo’s that was held
out as she leaned forward to try, instinctively, to
help him, whipped his hand away, frightened of
damaging her with the almighty force he felt . . .
 THE BLACK MOON 93

the excruciating pain ripping at his guts . . . tilted

back again against the chair, knocked it across the
room, and collapsed headlong onto the floor.
Woo screamed out with every ounce of her
body, screamed and screamed and screamed until
she thought her lungs would explode . . . she
almost stood up, turning across the bed, pulling at
the pipes that held her trapped to the machines
beside her . . . leaning over the side, one arm
stretched to the floor, desperately trying to touch
Pinball . . . just touch him for the last time. . .
touch his flesh, feeling the warmth that came from
him . . . feel the humanness. . . please. Kee was in
the room, his voice sounded across a tannoy sys- ~
tem that came from some other part of the room
. .. he spoke in their own language, loud and fast.
He bounded across the floor, stepping over Pin-
ball’s prone body, took Woo in soft, gentle hands
and held her back onto the bed, placing huge
palms across her stomach, pressing on the side and
back muscles that would breach if she overstressed
. . . breach and bring on a miscarriage or a
premature birth . . . his words now coming closer,
softer in her ear, the power of his telepathic senses
seeping into her brain, calming her, leaving her
weak and helpless . . . not quickly enough, for her
emotions were high and she was a determined
woman .. . determined first and foremost to pro-
tect the man she loved rather than the child she
held inside her...
‘Pinball, Pinball . . . Pinball... Pinbali...
Pinball . . .’”’ She shouted, the name coming out
slightly turned and different in the intonations of
her own tongue but quite strong, nevertheless... .
Three intern Mandroids came into the room as
94 CABAL: Volume 2

she slowly sank under the greater power of Kee’s

hypnotic suggestion. The Mandroid slowly lifted
Pinball’s body, delicately placed him on a
stretcher and carried him out.
‘‘Please, no... not yet... please, not yet... .”’
Woo spoke again in English . . . in Pinball’s
tongue as he was taken from her room.
‘*Please don’t take his body away . . . not yet
. .. please, not yet... mot... yet...mot...”
And she was asleep, troubled.

The contractions began almost immediately after

Woo went into the induced subconscious state.
Kee tried to change the rhythm, applying massage
but the young girl’s body was too strong and too
determined and the child was big enough and
about able to start birth, so he gave up and handed
over the whole procedure to the pediatricians.
Within one hour the child was born. A boy, a big
boy, with huge brown eyes and very fine black
curly hair all over his body. Within another half
hour most of this had shed and the child left was
clear and bright, strong and kicking. His face was
broad, the skin wrinkled and bright red with his
lung-bursting cries. The baldness could remind
Woo only of his father.
‘‘Can I not hold him even for a moment, just
for amoment Kee?’’
Kee turned to the doctors, around the bed in
droves, and the head pediatrician signaled that it
was possible with adjustments. Kee put out his
hand and a tiny spark jumped from the fingertips
onto the child’s body. A force field passed around
the skin in a tingling rush and the child was put
against Woo’s breast, its face reaching up for the
 THE BLACK MOON 95

nipple it could not take. Only a tiny electrical

current ran between the mother and the child for a
moment and she held him, feeling the charge but
feeling the skin’s natural warmth seep through to
her own. Her face streaked with tears and she
wept in sudden realization of what lay ahead. In
that second she knew what the future would be...
the future that Kee had told Pinball . . . the future
she had waved aside. . . the future for her and for
them all . . . but perhaps... . just perhaps not for
the child . . . not for him.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Cybernificant

How does it feel? How different is it? How does it

feel to be carried high on a building of wires and
tubes, atop a metal and plastic dome and without
an ounce of control? You ask yourself how it felt
to be real. How was it before? Surviving by forget-
ting.
Pinball forgot everything the moment it had
gone except the memory that there had been a
memory—the worst thing to remember. He lay on
his back—much the same way as he had seen the
boy lie that first day he had watched the SETcon
in operation. He lay there, his eyes open, his brain
shut, looking up at the ceiling, wondering so far
down inside his subconscious that all the top
layers were comatose, bypassed, not reached yet.
His shocked but sturdy brain was resetting the
foundations to build upon, beginning at the begin-

97
98 CABAL: Volume 2

ning and hoping to work its way up the grimy

stairs to the top.
Down there were dreams he would not dream of
dreaming—and knowledge that upstairs laid no
claim to, thoughts between thoughts.
Down here Pinball was not on Charybdis—not
on Earth—not even in the Universe. A deep black
shadow had passed over him, cloaked and still un-
certain. Pinball’s conscious level recognized death .
—his subconscious set out to confuse it—for there
was still life there. It was as though the vulture had
descended to inspect the prey and finding it lack-
ing the final touches, had flown away leaving him
with the memory of what he could expect when the
light finally went out.
He could detect his body though. He could flex
the links, even his gammy arm, lately replaced he
knew, but now it seemed to be there again, as
weak as ever. His heart beat a lot harder and a
faint humming could be heard within his head, or
perhaps his chest.
He breathed in. He clenched his fists, tightened
his balls, everything was present and correct.
Come to think of it though, the ceiling didn’t
look quite the same as he imagined it should. The
light wasn’t right, there were stray thoughts,
behind a diffuser, floating around above him.
Now and again he thought he rose into the air,
high up towards the ceiling and then back again.
The colors were changed, the edges of everything
failed to meet exactly as they should. Kee was
wrong. Pinball did feel much the same as he had
felt when the new arm was fitted—ready to give it
all a try—prepared not to give up. He lifted again,
above his body, rising higher this time, looking
 THE BLACK MOON 99

around, turning at the top of the room and

looking down for a second at his own body. But it
wasn’t his body, it was different, something much
bigger, not the same shape. And he returned, back
down, again lying on the couch. Of course. He
didn’t have all the right data. His brain was still
living on a lie, the blue aura they had told him
about. His brain had the wrong blueprint.
Blueprint! That was good . . . he would tell them
that when he got up. That would be his English
name for their aura . . . a blueprint of the past. He
tried hard to set this little piece of pleasure aside in
his memory so as not to forget when he awoke
from the dream. But there was no way he could be
sure of it, he had no notepad to commit to the
conscious world, no pencil to draw the words and
no place to set the notepad for consistency so that
even he could understand it.
His brain was setting up propaganda to stop
him considering the truth, he knew that too, but
he couldn’t stop it.
Blue, his body was blue. He knew that from the
way it had looked when he looked down upon it.
He sat up and considered the color for himself this
time, raising his back straight. It was certainly
blue. And smooth too, without that lumpy
humanness that it normally had, normally had
had... before they had taken it away.
There wasn’t the smell either, no smell of sweat
or physical movement, no pungency or even the
smell of cleanness, not even a soapiness or per-
fume, all sterile and coated, no leaks. He had con-
trol of his own movements though, his fingers
twitched, his arms shifted precisely as they should,
no bodily madness or excess. He could not justify
100 CABAL: Volume 2

his state by calling it shoddy, the workmanship

was fine.
He slid off the bed and stood up, straight. There
was a mirror in the room but it was too dark to see
anything much. Only the shadows and brief
glimpses of light reflected in the glass—giving him
no solid knowledge.
He thought of Woo as he stood there—still in
the night. The memory of her loss and the
snatching away of the few days together as lovers ©
made him cry—made his brain rush upwards with
emotions and the tears burst upon his human
eye—successful—giving him real feeling where he
feared to have lost it. To cry before would not
have been an event but now the simplicity of it
provoked a dreadful feeling of desolation and
happiness—a portion of his humanidy was left
him—his eye was for tears and yet it was a patch
on the whole—an insignificant blot of im-
perfection within a whole of completed ideal—so
small a blemish yet such a great relief if he could
not resolve it. Was that really why they left an
eye—was it not to see—to let the brain have a
touch of real light—or was it to permit the tears,
tears that mourned the death of the heart.
Suddenly he determined to sweep all this aside,
to begin to come to terms with the truth. He
stepped forward with ease and practice. There was
no stumbling or weakness, he just stepped for-
ward and as he put out a hand to search for a light
switch the wall opened. Where there had been
black there was suddenly a slit of light and then a
wide gap and then in it a small figure, Woo.
He half-turned towards her familiar shape. She
stood stock-still in the opening, her face upturned
, be
 THE BLACK MOON 101

but unfeatured. The light, from behind, masked

her; she made no movement; her body did not
even shake or twist, and the only part of her that
might have given a hint as to her feelings was
black.
Perhaps they had already started on her and this
was a wraith, sent to torment Pinball, just her
original shape and when the light was cast on its
face it would show where the needles had cut it
away, leaving the bloody remains.
Then she moved, just for an instant and only a
small movement, backwards, as though in a
delayed shock, retreating from what she saw. And
the light was cast over her face and it was real and
brown and beautiful, clear, beautiful, beautiful
. more beautiful than she had ever looked
before. She stayed there, probably, Pinball
thought, picking up his needs and fears to see her
expression.
‘I have your aura Pinball . . . you must find
mine before the SETcon takes me.”’
‘‘Ka...’’ Pinball opened his mouth and spoke,
the sound coming out was as near to his own
familiar voice as he could tell but the words were
not certain . . . it was not English . . . it was not his
own tongue that he spoke and yet he knew what he
had planned to say and it coincided with his
thoughts...
‘*You can speak our language as well as your
own Pinball . . . everything provided. . .”’
‘*Ra hourere, ourtore, ea, hourere, . . . I wish,
must, I wish. . .’’
‘*You see? You speak our musical tongue. . .
the best of our languages . . . that is something
new for you to enjoy...”’
102 CABAL: Volume 2

She smiled a beaming but quite unreal smile...

a hollow, painful smile and, coming back into the
habit of thought-reading Pinball noticed that she
had erected a battlement around her mind that
kept him completely out.
‘*Lea pararu me orto. . .’’ Pinball said.
‘*Yes my love, and soon they will take mine too
. . So you had better become accustomed to your
own loss before you turn to me. Look in the
mirror, turn up the light in your head, only your
brain has masked the details till now.’’
Pinball turned back to the mirror, and sure
enough the light was there, and now his con-
sciousness seemed willing to take the first look.
He saw the stranger he had watched from above
his bed when his mind had taken the death trip.
He was blue, different tones of blue from the top
of his rounded, perfectly shaped head, to the tip
of his long, powerful feet, each slightly out-
turned. He looked, up and down, a slim dullness
engulfing any real appreciation of what he saw.
The shock that lurked inside him was securely
cloaked by the natural protections his brain
possessed, added by the ‘‘applicants’’ that the
SETcon had injected into him during the ops. Like
dental surgery, the pain was dulled cleanly out for
sometime to come and only later would the true
knowledge come.
‘*A magnificent sight,’’ Woo helped.
‘‘Ablanearerne . . . ablanearerne ;
ablanearerne . . .”’ Pinball spoke the lilting word,
meaning truly. The sound of it echoed through his
head as if he was empty of any other thought.
Truly, a magnificent sight.
‘‘Now you must rest, come, lie down. I will stay
 THE BLACK MOON 103

with you until you wake. . . . I promise never to

leave your side now until it is my turn.’’ Woo
moved to his side and took his arm. He felt her
touch, well. He moved to the bed and lay upon it
slowly, resting his head back upon the pillow she
adjusted to the right height. It did not matter
much, for comfort was adjustable. He closed the
robotic eye, closed it tight, looked once more
upon her to preserve her as protection against his
dreams, and then let the human eye sink too.
‘‘Ablanearerne. . . cybernificant . . .’’
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Tunnels and Tunnels

The night before there had been another Charyb-

dian storm, raging across the planet, through the
city labyrinths, across the hills, against the Wall.
The Mandroids went inside and stayed there, the
children snuggled in their safe beds and listened to
the whistling and the crashing, and thanked the air
and their dreams that they weren’t outside. In
such climatic attacks the people tended to remain
in their homes for the rest of the night, even after
everything was calm again.
But even in the storms Mandroids died. Even
when everything else was chaos, a Mandroid brain
was subsiding into its last living thoughts and an
eye was closed against the light.
There was one named Rigmarole. He had been a
teacher; one whose responsibility had been to take
the young children through the last lessons of

105
 106 CABAL: Volume 2

training before the SETcon. He was a popular

Mandroid and had taught the young for nearly
ninety years, every day. Every year he would have
a new class of children and every year he would
talk to them of the ways in which they could cope
with the beginning of their adulthood. But lately
he had become less certain in his steps, holding the
sides of chairs to guide him around the class-
rooms, stumbling, making the children giggle in
their thoughtless way. Like all children they soon
forgot how good a Mandroid he had been and
considered only his end; knowing that these signs
-were a certainty that Rigmarole would soon not be
with them; that within weeks he would disappear
and never be seen again on this side of the planet,
in their world, he would cease to exist and they
gave little thought, as was their training, to where
he would go and what he would do.
Eventually Rigmarole had stopped going to the
school. By order of his superiors he stayed at
home, resting, comfortable during the last part of
his stay in this city, cared for by no one save his
one faithful child. All the Mandroids adopted one
child who would live with them, usually a child
who was to be old enough, once adopted, to coin-
cide towards the age of around fifteen, with his or
her own development towards Mandroid-hood.
It was part of their training, carefully planned.
Tonight, the night of the storm, was to be
Rigmarole’s last in Charybdis city. He finally took
on that strange change in his attitude, hardening
somehow, less stumbling, showing no more signs
of senility, walking straighter and talking with a
certain resigned clearness. His child friend cried a
little at the final realization and then left the
 THE BLACK MOON 107

house, returning to friends, now that the storm

was calmed. Rigmarole took a last look around his
home, more to see that everything was in place for
his successor than for any reason of sentimen-
tality. He felt none. He stepped out of the front
entrance and shut the door. There was still a
strong wind rushing through the narrow pedes-
trian ways as he crossed to a turning that led to the
subway. As he walked down the escalator, slowly
with purpose, a shadow slipped from a wallside at
the top of the subway entrance and followed him
down into the darkness.
Rigmarole stepped on to the platform and a car
drew up at the platform. Rigmarole climbed in
and the car set off. Immediately behind it came
another car and the shadowy figure, tall and Man-
droidal, stepped in. The two cars traveled close
behind one another along a long journey, far
enough behind not to be too close but each
remaining in the same selection of tunnels, never
deviating from the same track.
They sped along in the dimness for a long time
and then both slowed to a halt. Each one, in turn,
' shed its occupant on the same platform, and each
passenger walked through the narrow exit marked
“‘The Wall’’ in the administrative language of the
Mandroids.
Rigmarole, without any show of hesitation or
emotion, touched a button on the wall of a huge
gateway and the great metal gates pulled back. He
stopped for a moment, facing the opening until it
was set wide, and the one that followed him drew
closer behind, to within a few meters. Rigmarole
did not turn or look to see who it was that took so
much interest in his progress. He simply stepped
108 CABAL: Volume 2

forward between the gates as they began to close.

Pinball slipped in behind him, just in time, into
the pitch darkness. Rigmarole walked now as
though he were indeed a robot, which he was, af-
ter a fashion. Pinball followed, using the light
shed from Rigmarole’s chest beam, leaving his
own turned off. The tunnel was completely
without light other than that shed by the android.
There were no smooth surfaces like the building
walls in the city; everything was damp and craggy, -
uncared for and very very old.
The android did not stop at all, hesitated not for
a moment, but walked steadily as if in a dream. If
Pinball had had a heart he would have heard it
pumping now. He felt a strange sensation of
exhilaration, excitement that came from his head.
His brain told him that he was frightened, rather
than giving his skin a tingle or his heart a jolt. The
feeling was not there.
He knew that there was danger but not what it
might be, or where it might come from. The an-
droid in front had nothing to lose and showed no
signs of discontent or disturbance. He simply put
one heavy foot in front of the other and continued
on his long and tireless way.
They walked, one about twenty meters behind
the other, for about four kilometers and then Pin-
ball, looking up, straight ahead of him, saw a thin
light source at the other end of the dark tunnel.
Five kilometers was what Kee had reckoned on the
width of the Wall and five kilometers was exactly
what it was. Pinball’s Mandroidal eye measured
the distance from where he stood to the light at the
end as exactly one kilometer and his feet told the
calculators in his Mandroid brain that he had
 THE BLACK MOON 109

walked four kilometers. Rigmarole continued and

Pinball allowed him to draw further ahead, not
wishing to be too close once he left the tunnel in
case there was some kind of reception committee _
who might not welcome a regular Mandroid into
their robotic world. “
Soon Rigmarole reached the end and stepped
out of the half-light into the open. Pinball moved
swiftly up to within a few meters, keeping close to
one side of the tunnel, watching for any move-
ment outside. There was none. A well-worn path
led from the exit, and Rigmarole the android took
it without question and without stopping. This
was the only pathway that led from the tunnel,
from the side of the Wall, and it had been taken by
thousands of other androids before him, growing
deeper and more even with every step.
The surrounding land was thick with vegeta-
tion, overgrown and heavily green and red. The
trees rose up high at the side of the Wall and huge-
bushes billowed with fat, juicy blossoms that
dropped their overripe petals onto the ground
where they lay untrodden. Either side of the path-
way, as it disappeared into the distance, was a
mass of entangled foliage, a forest of growth that
no one could have chopped or even touched for
centuries. The branches and growths were thin
and reedy, tall and unstrengthed by cutting. The
entanglement was so thick that no one could get
through the undergrowth without a blaster or a
heavy knife. There were no pathways away from
the central one and even looking up towards the
sky there was barely gap enough in the foliage to
let light through. Yet the ground boasted some
dappling of a strong sun that now shone from the
110 CABAL: Volume 2

west of the Wall, hot and determined. It was hard

to tell, but judging partly by the thickness of the
tree trunks it looked as though they might stand
almost as high as the Wall itself. Certainly, where
it was possible to see up through the wrapping
vegetation, there seemed no visible end to the
height.
Rigmarole’s footsteps through the forest could
still barely be heard, steady and even, stepping on
the occasional fallen twig that cracked under his .
weight. Pinball saw no need to follow him any-
more. The way, when he wished to take it, was
open and clear, or so he felt at that time. He
wished for the moment to sit and sample the new
air of this tropical climate, to look around and
maybe see if he could climb one of the trees; see
how far he could get towards the top. .
He settled down against the nearest tree trunk
and sat on the green grass. He felt for the moment
that should he wish it he could get back again.
That he would need only to wait for another dead
Mandroid who would open the door and he would
simply dash out again. So he was in no danger.
His human brain told him that he could feel con-
fident, that he had time enough to explore and
then he could go back with the knowledge he
needed to plan. On the other hand he did not wish
to be around at this end of the. tunnel when
another dead Mandroid came through. No reason
why, he just didn’t.
He remained looking up at the slowly seiidera
sun that shifted through the thick branches and
then stood up, turned towards the huge trunk and
began to climb.
 THE BLACK MOON 111

Digging the fingers of his androidal hands deep

into the bark he made rapid progress until he had
reached the first really deep foliage. Here he was
forced to cut and moved his powerful arm about
him to break a passage higher. It took a long time
to cover a small distance and as he went the
growth around him grew thicker and _ thicker,
much of it welded to the Wall itself which he came
closer to with every step. No one had been up
here, probably not for a thousand years. Pinball
felt in his human brain an excitement of being the
first to tread on wood that had remained un-
touched for generations of living creatures. It
could be that no living creature had touched this
part of the Wall since it was built, thousands of
years before, that the branches of the tree had
gradually grown higher and higher touching the
Wall, sliding up its solid surface alone and without
disturbance. Pinball was its first experience of
human encroachment since the beginning when
the stones were clean and new.
He had stopped to consider these thoughts when
he heard a sound coming from way below him.
For the first time since he began the ascent he
looked down. He was at least a hundred meters
off the ground and there was at least as much as
that above him, but below him there was some-
one, way down on the ground. He looked down
and adjusted the telescopic sight in his Mandroid
eye and he could make out a shape, a figure, a
familiar figure. He tuned up the receptors on his
ears and then stopped, for there was no need; he
was picking up strong thought patterns and they
were Woo’s. Woo had somehow gotten into the
Y
112 CABAL: Volume 2

tunnel and was standing at the bottom of the tree.

She had traveled the full length of the tunnel and
there she was, calling up to him with the thoughts
that connected them. He returned her thoughts,
telling her that he would come down, that she
should wait and he would be there in a moment. In
his eagerness he moved faster down than he
should have done and slipped. He tumbled thirty
meters before he could grab hold of anything, and
in doing so almost wrenched one arm out of
its artificial socket. But the building of the
SETcon was strong, strong enough to carry ten
times the weight of the body, and without a crack
Pinball’s body was pulled up sharp with the aid of .
a thick branch which bent with the sudden stress
on it. .
“Woo...” hecalled out. ... “I’m coming.. .’’
‘‘Don’t fall for heaven’s sake, take your time,
there’s no hurry, we have all the time in the
world.’’ As she spoke the last words he dropped to
the ground without having looked at her. Once on
his feet, still with his back to her, he turned
knowing the way she was in the thoughts of her
brain, but not ready at all for what he saw.
“So ...’’ he said. ‘‘They got you too. . . so
soon...” .
‘‘Well, you might have guessed.’’ Woo stood-
before him a Womandroid.
“*T once saw a very old film back on Earth...
very very old. . . called Metropolis . . . about an
old working society with people slaving at
machines all their lives. Then a mad inventor built
a robot. The robot was a female robot. It was
never explained why the robot was female, but I
remember thinking when I first looked atit, that
 THE BLACK MOON 113

she was the most beautiful robot I had ever seen

... not now though . . . you are the most beautiful
robot I have ever seen.”’
**T am a Mandroid, Pinball. . . not arobot.’’
“Oh, yes, of course . . . the pre-SETcon
training . . . a Mandroid.. . forgive me... but
you are beautiful . . . your body, and your face are
female.’’
““Of course . . . they don’t take everything away
from us.’’ ;
She stood with her hands behind her back and
her pelvis jutting slightly forward, swinging her
hips a little in a movement which to a human
might have seemed grotesque and ridiculous, but
to Pinball it was sheer heaven.
“No .. . 1 don’t mean exactly that I hadn’t ex-
pected you to look like a female Mandroid, simply
that when I knew you before, you were a girl. . .
small and slim with small breasts and the shapeof
a child, while now your breasts are bigger and
your hips more rounded. You are a woman now
... full-grown . . . the SETcon has matured your
figure in a week . . more than your former body
would have matured you in a year.’’
*“Yes...well...now we are together again.”’
They stood still looking at one another for a
moment and then Pinball wrapped both his arms
around her middle and lifted her up, swinging her
around and around. Then he set her down and she
looked up at him, smiling.
“Did Mandroids ever kiss before?’’ he asked.
**Not in general I don’t think, but that doesn’t
mean we can’t try...’’ She leaned up towards him
and puckered the lips that the SETcon had given
her. Pinball set a kiss upon them and felt the
114 CABAL: Volume 2

shiver that the artificial vibrators set up.

‘*Did you feel that?’’
‘Yes...’ she laughed... . ‘‘They thought of
everything, didn’t they?’’
They both laughed and held hands. No one here
would see them and within their own private world
the thoughts and ideas that shared their minds
were confident and real.
“So how the hell did you get into the tunnel?”’
Pinball asked.
‘‘The same way you did. I followed a dead
Mandroid. And what were you doing up a tree
when I got.here?’’
“‘Trying to get to the top, until thoughts in-
terrupted my progress. Why did you follow me?’’
‘“Because I knew where you were going and
why, and I wasn’t going to get left out of the
fun.”’
‘*Fun? How the hell did you overcome
all that
training they gave you back there?”’
‘‘Simple ... . Ihoned in on your wavelength and
kept on it. . . prevented all incoming attempts to
stop my progress and managed it as far as this.
Now I’m here, so I have no choice and I must say
it’s a relief not to find the mashing machines or
the other devices they tell us will grind our bodies
into dust once we hit the other side of the dreaded
Wall.”’
“Is that what they say?’’ Pinball led Woo to a
piece of grass and they sat down.
“*Tt’s one of the rumors that is spread to deter us
from coming through the tunnel. The other is that
we can’t get back once we’re here.’’ She turned
towards Pinball.
 THE BLACK MOON 115

*“Which is equally untrue, of course,’’ he said,

trying to fight off the thoughts that were seeping
through from her.
“No it isn’t . . . there’s no way back now, Pin-
ball.’’
‘‘Nonsense, all we have to do is sit by the en-
trance at the other end and wait for the doors to
open again, then slip through.”’
“Not so, I’m afraid, the doors are one-way,
there’s a force field across them that will let only
one-way traffic across it, specially polarized...
just in case a Mandroid decides he’s not quite an
android once he gets inside. I told you, the Man-
droids don’t like the end of their race . . . they
don’t want any . . . repeat, any Androids around
on that side, so they make damn sure they can’t
get back once they get through.’’
**So, you mean you came here knowing you
wouldn’t get home again?’’
“Of course . . . there wasn’t anything to keep
me there without you. I may have been converted,
but I can still love and as long as I am able to love
I want to be with the Mandroid I love. That’s you,
in case you had forgotten—coming all this way
without even so much as a goodbye thought-
wave.’’
‘*T didn’t want you to give it all up for me. I’m
only a bloody human being . . . a trespasser on this
planet.”’
**You are the start of the new beginning. Our
child is the result of your trespassing . . . in any
case it was I who trespassed, I brought you here,
after all . . . you didn’t want to come and when
you got here you didn’t want to stay, so I’m the
 116 CABAL: Volume 2

one to blame and I want to be with the man I got

into so much trouble.”’
Pinball looked down at her, still adjusting to the
change, but knowing the girl through her familiar
thoughts.
“You are beautiful and I love you even more
than I did before . . . you know something?”’
““What?”’
‘I feel horny . . . my brain still retains the
feelings, the lust and the desire, it still understands
them, and yet there’s no way it can do anything
about it.’’
“*Yes there is.”’
‘‘Eh?’’ Pinball turned and looked at her, in-
credulous.
‘‘There is a way. They don’t tell you about it
unless you go through the pre-SETcon classes,
which of course clever old Pinball didn’t. They tell
us, though, the children. There is a way. Man-
droids can make love just like human beings, and
without any risk of pregnancy.’’
“IT don’t believe it, that’s ridiculous . . . utterly
ridiculous, they took away my.. .”’
“*Yes, but if you had taken the trouble to look
you’d find they gave ycu another one. . . much
bigger actually . . . but you’ve spent so much of
’ your time acting out the machismo role that you
haven’t discovered the source of it. . .”’
-**The source of what!’’ Pinball peered down
between his legs. Woo moved closer and put a
slim, robotic finger down where he opened the
powerful limbs. She lifted a small layer of fine
fabric that covered his loins from the lower hips
down over the smooth crotch and around to the
back of his buttocks. The fabric lifted and beneath
 THE BLACK MOON 117

it was a panel. She took his finger and touched it

against a plate on the surface of the panel. The
panel slid back and a long, smooth, perfectly
shaped artificial penis sprang out, as though
someone had pressed the lid of a joke ‘‘jack in the °
box.’’ Pinball experienced the strangest of sensa-
tions; a complete overall electric shock that ran
the entire length and breadth of his artificial body
and started and finished at the stem of this
magnificent organ.
‘‘Almighty God, I don’t believe it . . . a dildo
. a bloody dildo...’’
‘“‘What is a dildo?’’ Woo questioned, slowly
stroking the soft fabric of the organ that seemed
to be growing even bigger with her touch. He
turned to her and watched her slip the same type
of fabric covering from her own pudenda. Un-
derneath it was a perfect pair of labial lips,
smooth and glistening with lubrication. The only
thing missing was hair.
*““Come on... tryit...I’m still a virgin, after
all, and they told us that the sensations are better
than the real thing .
‘This is the real thing my love,’’ Pinball said as
he moved between her legs .

Pinball and Woo the Mandroids walked through

the tall forests of the strange land beyond the Wall
for several hours without seeing any change in
_their surroundings. The track they walked was
well-worn and straight, hardly turning from a
straight westerly direction, and Pinball calculated
they had traveled some fifteen kilometers on their
long, strong legs before the light began to dim and
the Charybdian evening closed in around them.
118 CABAL: Volume 2

Then they began to hear sounds above their

heads, well above the top of the trees’ upper
branches, buzzing, some sort of aircraft flying in
circles and then darting off at great speed. This
happened five times, as though the craft were ob-
serving them through the branches, as they ap-
proached some center.
' Suddenly, without any hint of what might lay
ahead they stepped into a clearing, the forest
taking a sharp left turn and then no forest
anymore. Before them stood a small shack, ragged
and decrepit with wooden walls and a broken-
down door. There was a small window in the side
and the place looked as though no one had
inhabited it for years.
Cobwebs grew on the angles of the wood and
Woo stepped up to one, fingered it and turned to
Pinball.
‘*That’s acobweb... areal cobweb...”’
‘*So?’’ Pinball asked.
‘‘There are no spiders on Charybdis .... I’ve _
seen them on your planet, small eight-legged in-
sects but not on Charybdis. . . never.”’
‘*Really?’’
“Really . ... there are practically no insects on
Charybdis, they cannot live for some reason and it
is many thousands of years since they did. Yet,
here is a cobweb.”’
‘‘Curiouser and curiouser,’’ Pinball remarked.
They walked around the hut and peered in at the
window. Inside there was complete blackness, no
sign of life or death. They could see nothing at all
within, it was densely dark, matte black.
‘*Shall we go in?’’ Woo suggested. i
‘*Put up a force field around you . . . protection
 THE BLACK MOON _ 419

. . . you never know . . there’s something odd

about this place.’’
They walked to the door and as Pinball’s foot
was about to step inside a figure appeared from
nowhere and stood before him.
“*Hello,’’ it said. It was an Android.
‘*Hello,’’ Pinball replied, somewhat hesitant.
‘““Why have you come here. . . you still have the
eye?’’ The android asked.
“Yes .. . well, we have come to see if you can
help us.’’.
‘‘Me?”’ replied the Android, incredulously . . .
almost incredulously.
‘‘Well, not just you, but whoever lives on this
side of the wall.’’ Woo put in.
“Ah... all of us then. . .’’ The Android
looked relieved.
“Yes, allof you... please.’’
‘Please? That is a humanidy word I think, I
recall.’’
‘*Are you very old?’’ Woo asked the Android.
**Yes, Ibelievelam...’’
‘“How many years?’’ Pinball asked.
‘‘A good many... . and a bad many. . . some-
times too many and sometimes not enough...”
replied the Android . . . actually smiling.
**Are you happy here?’’ Woo asked, uncertain
why she should ask.
‘Happy? Yes, I remember that word too. .
another very nice humanidy word . . . yes, I am
happy during the good many years, not so happy
during the bad—and you? Are you happy as a
one-eye .. . Ihave two, you see.”’
“Two Android eyes,’’ Woo commented,
standing beside Pinball, slightly behind him.
120 CABAL: Volume 2

‘*Yes ...no human eye, no death potential . . .

no cares, no wishes, no desires, no worries, no
pains, no happiness, no sad... . no real thoughts
at all . . . you see. . . so I live a good many
years...’’ 2
‘‘Here?’’ Woo asked, stepping closer and sur-
veying the dark emptiness behind the Android in
the hut.
‘*Here is enough for now . . . for me, but not
for you because you have come from over there |
and you have not been here, not inside here.”’
‘‘What is inside here?’’ Woo leaned slightly
around the tall robotic figure in an effort to catch
a reflection or some indication of what might be
within.
‘*Nothing if you like, but much too.”’
‘“Are you a joker?”’ Pinball leaned forward and
spoke close:to the Android’s ear.
‘*Yes, and I’m not deaf, why do you lean so
close . . . you might give me the ends of your dead
cancer... that would not do, for then I would
hand it on to your child when he comes here.’’
‘You know of our child?’’ Woo stepped back
in line and looked up at the Android who gazed
down at her, turning his big strong head.
“T know. ..I know almost everything that goes
on over there.”’
**How?’’

‘*Oh, ways and means. . . ways and means.””

There was silence around them, and then sud-
denly the sound of some weird creature or siren or
something that sent out an intense whooning
sound, high and low and strong, echoing across
the land and into the heavy forest behind him.
‘What was that?”’ It continued and the An-
 THE BLACK MOON 121

droid did not answer until it stopped for a

moment.
‘*That’s the whales . .’’
‘“‘The whales . . . here, whales . . . how,
where?’’ Water could be heard splashing high and
strong, like a heavy surging sea, and the whooning
sound came again, wild and high.
‘*Behind those trees is an ocean.”’
*““My God . . . with whales.’’ Why, he did not
know, but the idea of life and oceans here, with
only Androids, seemed incredible.
“*Yes, and sharks too, and other fishes... . I
grow them myself.’’
‘“Grow them?’’
‘‘Breed might be a better word . . . they came
from Earth, you see . . . or the first one did, then
the others came from a side dimension not far
from Earth and they mated, now there are thou-
sands of them . . . frolicking in the ocean . . . won-
derful sound . . . and dolphins, of course.”’
‘*Dolphins?’’
“*Yes, lots of dolphins, they’re my favorite. . .
very clever creatures, dolphins.’’
The Android wandered away from the side of
the hut and led them to the forest edge across from
where they had emerged. A short walk beyond the
trees and they were looking down and out over the
vastness of an ocean that spread for thousands of
kilometers, across their entire field of view.
‘‘Beyond there are our cities, and our towns...
many millions of Androids living and making...
things...”
‘“‘Things?’’ said Pinball, becoming strangely
elated by the glorious scene before him. ‘‘That
doesn’t sound like a very Android thing to say.”’
122 CABAL: Volume 2

‘‘Ah, well, you see, I am not a very Android

Android.”’
‘‘Indeed?’’ Pinball stepped to one side and
looked more closely at the figure next to him. He
was the same height and build as Pinball and his
head sat nobly upon excessively broad shoulders.
The chest was slightly more barreled than most
Mandroids, and of course he had lost the human
eye, but in its place had been fixed another An-
droid eye, perfectly.
“If you adjust your Android eye over the ©
northern edge of the sea you should be able to take
in a small part of the nearest city ... . over there.’’
He pointed to the north, and both Pinball and
Woo looked, adjusting to the maximum. They
could just pick out the tops of tall spires that sat
close to the edge of their sight.
‘*You have tall buildings,’’ Woo said.
“Of course . . . only the Mandroid is afraid of
heights; we do not concern ourselves so much with
the ground as you. . . we have even traveled into
space . . . though not often, for the journeys
through time are more fun. .. much more fun.”’
“*¥ou are not as I had imagined,’’ Woo said.
*‘Oh? And how had you imagined us?”’
_ ‘Like... well... like robots really.”’
‘*Ah, well, we are robots but then we were all
once Mandroids so we have much of that left in us
... only the trappings and the traps are gone when
we come here. Shall we return to the hut? I have
some surprises for you.”’
They returned to the ramshackle old hut and
stepped towards the black hole of a door, the
blackness even more so now than before. Pinball
went forst and Woo observed his body slow down
 THE BLACK MOON 123

as it approached the entrance, his pace deadening,

like a time-lag had set into his steps. As he drew
mearer he became even slower, and she hesitated
before moving on, watching the phenomenon she
knew well enough, the entrance into a time
stream, the slackening of the lightwaves as the
body was pulled into a controlled ‘‘time pacer,’’ a
sort of mini-pulsar a black hole brought into the
land and held fast. This was the science of a
remarkable people, an advancement the Man-
droids had not even begun to master. She won-
dered what she was dealing with.
Stepping faster, she walked through the ap-
parition of Pinball’s still drifting figure and en-
tered the hut. From outside she would appear to
slow too, walking very slowly behind her Man-
droid leader. There was only blackness inside,
save for the continued reverberation of Pinball
and the Android before her. She was alone now,
entirely alone, there was no contact for her inside
a time-pacer, she knew that. She had felt this as a
child on her own meager experiments between the
dimensions, stepping out into a room a thousand
years distant and ten thousand worlds to one side,
stepping in to see her self step out and in again and
out like two mirrors placed across from one
another, the figure measured over a thousand
dimensions. But this was something far more
sophisticated and controlled, far beyond what she
could understand, and all; the work of arobot...
some robot!
_ There were sound leaks though. They were the
hardest things to eradicate from time-pacers,
sounds of other times and other places, that
drifted in and out of the corridor set up by the im-
124 CABAL: Volume 2

ported pulsar, soft and winging mixtures of

sound. They were the sounds that can be picked
up anywhere if you listen hard enough. Every
world has natural time-pacers in it. As a child she
used to sit in her room with earphones on her head
and listen to a tape recorder playing back the
sound of an empty room she had previously re-
corded. Within two or three playbacks she would
begin to hear the sounds and try to pick out some
sense or language. Very often there was a
language, though with such a jumble of different
pasts and futures it was hard to discover what they
said.
This pacer was smoother, the gaps shutoff
more effectively and the leaks put to good use,
quantified and made more pleasant with boosters
for the good and softeners for the bad. She knew
where they were going. She could pick up in this
sensitive and unscreened environ the thoughts of
the Android, and he took them to the city across
the ocean.
She found herself quickly forgetting her own
land in the anticipation of the new and in the com-
pany of Pinball she cared little where she landed.
They stepped out into a room, large and
spaciously furnished. The walls were white and the
floor tiled, thick, broad red tiles. Only a huge
table stood to one side with three chairs set against
it. The Android sat down quite calmly in one of
the chairs and offered the others to Pinball and
Woo.
‘“Come, sit down. . . talk to me.’’
They sat and said nathide: :
A sound poured into the room like slowly run- 1
ning horses, pounding their hooves across the —
 THE BLACK MOON 125

floor in perfect rhythm. Pinball sat up and looked

for the source; the walls were solid and there was
no visible door but the sound went on, pounding
heavier and heavier into his ears. He looked to
Woo for some indication of what was happening
but she sat stock still, her human eye glazed and
her features quite motionless. The Android was
the same, and the sound grew so loud he could not
bear it. He stood and yelled at the top of his voice
across the rampaging clatter. It was a kind of
music but so powerful that he had to hold his
robot’s head to keep it from shattering. But
neither Woo nor the Android budged from their
seats.
He stepped across to Woo and would have
shaken her but his hand fell on solid rock. She was
frozen hard and unyielding, dead, stone. He
stepped back, the sequence of events completely
confusing his sense of logic. He moved to the An-
droid and felt the same result, quite still and quite
hard. They were completely gone, completely
frozen and only he could move and still the thun-
dering noise crashed through the room and
through his head. He could not stop it until it
stopped itself.
Silence. No, a softer sound, vibrating gently
now, not hurting his reception center. A cool re-
verberation, taking away the alarm he had felt and
replacing it with a different confusion, not re-
laxing but not hurting. This time he felt frightened
in a different way, as though he were being
stroked more and more quickly by a giant killer
who whispered in his ear, don’t worry, don’t
worry, I will kill you without pain. Then that
_ stopped too.
 126 CABAL: Volume2 2

Woo and the Android remained still. They were

still rock hard and motionless. He was entirely
alone in this place. The last words that the An-
droid had uttered hung in his head . . . *‘Come, sit
down... talk to me.”’ =
“‘T am talking . . . where are you, Android . .
where are you, Woo... please . . . where are you
... don’t leave me here alone.’’
He shouted the words in the silence but they fell
short of any hearing except his own.
He sat down. There was no fathoming this -
event. The time tunnel, the pacer that Woo had
communicated to him, explaining kindly and with
soothing words in his brain, was bad enough to
_ encompass, but this had no explanation, no rea-
son and no Woo to help him. i
And she sat there, stock-still, thoughtless, as
good as dead. Until the light diminished and went
out. Seconds passed and the light came up again,
but the room was different, larger and there was
no one else within it, living or dead.
In front of Pinball, who stood, shaken but
whole, an image materialized at the far end of the
room, containing four Androids in black garb,
seated behind a table upon which they rested their
hands like adjudicators. Their faces were dark
too, but glistening and powerful, their heads
flecked with silver and gold, their bodies covered
in a deep, shining blackness.
Pinball knew that he stood before a highly
evolved race of completely cybernetic people,
developed, even by their very outward look, to a
far more advanced level than even the Mandroids.
‘“‘We form the leadership of this planet’s
Androidal community; we are sorry that you were
 THE BLACK MOON 127

separated from your companions by such drastic |

methods, but your determination and your will are
strong and we were forced to undertake excep-
tional methods. We need to speak to you and your
Mate separately.’” The central one who spoke
became silent for a moment and the one on his
right took up the story.
“‘We are not familiar with any previous attempt
by Mandroids to come under the Wall before their
death. You are the first, and although we fear no
reprisals from your people for your coming, we
must establish your motives for doing so before
you are allowed to go free.”’
Then the third in the group took up the balance
of the interrogation. ‘“We recognized in particular
that there are differences in your make-up, in your
mentality. You do not appear to have been Man-
droid for as long as your mate, and yet your brain
patterns show you to be older in years than she.
Please explain this.’’
‘*Where is Woo?’’ Pinball was still shaken but
“he did not intend simply to kowtow to these
robots, however advanced.
‘She is safe, no harm will come to either of you
provided you give us due explanation. Please an-
swer my question.”’
“‘T am from Earth,’’ Pinball capitulated.
‘*What is Earth?’’ asked the central Android.
‘*Rarth is another time and another place.”’
*““You have come here through the dimen-
sions?’”
“Ves.”’

““Who brought you?’’ he asked.

““Woo.”’ if
““Why?”’
128 CABAL: Volume 2

‘‘Because I was unhappy and she saw me.’’ He

did not wish to tell them the truth for somewhere
in his head he felt they questioned him because
they knew.
‘‘And for this reason she brought you across
five thousand worlds to Charybdis . . . this seems
to us to be unlikely, please provide a more exact
reason.’’ The right-hand robot spoke emphati-
cally.
‘First . . . tell me what you feel about your
neighbors,’’ Pinball asked, a note of temerity in.
his voice.
‘‘We are here to question you, not for you to
question us, but we are prepared to give you some
explanation. The Androids living on this side of
the Wall number ten times the highest population
ever to have lived on the other side of the Wall.
We have established a complete world of our own
and we need continuous stock of new Androids to
power our empire. We have stretched out our
hands to almost every world available to us in
many of the time dimensions. We ‘have even
colonized two nearby planets in our own system.
Our people are advanced and strong, sophisticated
and without any of the disadvantages of human-
idy. But we could not be as we are without our
beginnings, without the chrysalis provided by the
children who live on Charybdis, without their
humanidy at the beginning, and most of all with-
out their great mental powers. If there were no
more children to become Mandroids then there
would be no more Mandroids to die. In this case
we would have to build our own kind and we
could not build a human brain to give us what the
 THE BLACK MOON 129

children give us.’’ He stopped, almost as though

he felt he had said too much.
“You have colonized planets, mastered other
times and yet you rely entirely on children?’’ Pin-
ball was incredulous, but it all fitted, perfectly.
From the tiny source of a struggling human
nature, an almost extinct living creature race
which lived entirely for a future that might find
cure for its ailment, hoping desperately for an an-
swer and looking nowhere but inward came a
massive society of completely non-human beings
that thrived because of the sensitive development
of that cultured human race, thrived and profited
and of course wished to preserve itself too.
‘“‘We rely upon the development of a human
race that has lived for almost two million years on
this planet. We do not wish to hurt them in any
way; on the contrary we wish to preserve them.”’
‘*But you wish to preserve the cancer too.”’
**The cancer is there . . . no one can take that
away.”’
**You hope.”’
‘Without the cancer there would be no Man-
droids,’’
“*And very soon no Androids either.’’
‘‘Exactly.’’ The central Android was silent,
looking directly at Pinball who shaded his
thoughts from their intrusion.
‘‘Why could you not rest as you are? There is no
_ reason why you should not retain your kingdoms
and your colonies, remain strong, with you and
others like you at the head, using Androids
without the benefits of humanidy growth to power
your development.”’
130 CABAL: Volume 2

‘‘That would be simple, were it possible, but an

empire must grow or die, and growth means
strength and to get strength you need an advan-
tage. We have that advantage . . . there is no
greater race wherever we travel. No race has ever
mastered the powers of magic, ESP, time travel
and yet been strong in body and powerful in logic.
We are indomitable now. There are many races of
human beings, many races of robots, but none ex-
cept we, who combine the two. Without that com-
bination we would soon lose our hold and fall.
back. Then Charybdis would become the center of
attack from many worlds and not only we would
suffer, but the Mandroids too. You see, though
you may spurn our methods and our deter-
mination to keep them as they are, there is no
alternative, for if they change they die along with
uss
‘*Who began all this . . . you did.”’
*“Ves.”’

‘Then you are to blame for what may happen.”’

“Tt will not happen. It cannot, unless the cancer
is cured, and that is impossible.”’
“No... itis not impossible . . . it has been done
already.”’
Pinball blurted this out without thinking and
regretted it immediately, but of course in some
subtle way, this is exactly what the Androids had
hoped he would do.
‘So... this is as we had supposed.’’
“‘Great.’’ Pinball sat down on the floor and
tried to cross his legs. He couldn’t cross them and
he wondered vaguely what he was going to do for
the rest of his life . . . not being able to cross his
legs.
 THE BLACK MOON 131

“You have impregnated a woman-child on

Charybdis with cancer-free sperm. She will give
birth and the child will be isolated until it is old
enough to give sperm to another child. The can-
cer-free race will begin and eventually there will be
no cancer, correct?’’
“Bully for you.”’
‘*But we can stop that.’’
**No you can’t, the child died.’’
“*You lie to us now; that is difficult to do with-
out our detection. The child must therefore
already be born. But we will go and we will find it
and destroy it. Then there will be no problem for
us.”’
“‘They’ll do it again, they’ll get another human
from another planet and start again, you can’t
control them all the time.”’
‘*We had hoped not to have to, but of course we
can control them as easily as we control you. We
are superior in every way, especially in numbers.
We will put them under martial law and place time
restrictions on the surface of the planet’s atmos-
phere. No one from other time scales will enter
and no one from Charybdis will leave without our
knowing. Pinball . . . you cannot win so do not at-
tempt it.’’
A tremendous explosion rocked the room where
Pinball sat. He jumped to his feet just in time to
see Woo’s face appear, huge and dreadful, full of
anger and strength, enlarged almost to the full size
of the room. She burst into his head and he felt
himself fly from his own body. He could not stop
what happened. An awesome power was emitting
from Woo’s mind and at first Pinball feared it
might be a punishment exacted by the Androids,
132 CABAL: Volume 2

but all three of them scattered from the table

where they sat in image and disappeared in chaos.
Pinball was being lifted out of his body like a
ghost, a poltergeist, flying out on to a plane of
mystical travel powered by this incredible
girl/Mandroid. Her brain was so strong that he
could only allow himself to be carried by her will.
It was as though the aura that still lived around his
Mandroid frame had been released from its con-
fines and raced across the air. He was carried out
of the room and now flew high above a massive
and tall city beside an ocean. It was the ocean that.
the first Android had shown them. He watched as
the water flashed by below him and soon he was
over land and then immediately forest, tall trees,
as tall as the Wall itself which loomed ahead of
him. He shot past the place where he had climbed
the tree halfway and then over the top of the Wall
itself. The great five-kilometer width of stone was
covered in seconds and he was back again in
Charybdis. He felt an immediate peace, a strength
and power now that he was away from the An-
droids, but in the back of his traveling mind he
wished that Woo might be with him. She remained
back there; why he did not know. What could she
do? As he traveled towards the sea’s edge and
Kee’s estate, he thought a message from Woo. She
told him that she was safe and that she must
remain there to prevent the Androids for a while
from following Pinball’s escape in his mental
travel. She was creating the most terrible chaos
there, crashing everything in her power against
every surface she could envisage, throwing the
great power of the Androids into temporary
chaos, keeping them busy enough for Pinball to
 THE BLACK MOON 133

report back to Kee, to give him a while to do

something to warn them of the danger to her
precious child.
The power that she possessed came in part from
her motherhood, from her humanidy created and
strengthened by love and the fear that harm might
come to that one thing in her life she cared for
most. And Pinball was her mystical missive. He
came towards the ground and stood, wavering in
the air before Kee’s house. He felt his body float
up the steps to the door and watched as Kee came
straight out, detecting the change in the environ-
ment, knowing that some presence summoned
him. Pinball spoke directly to his mind, but he felt
the words come from his own mouth. His body
was somehow there with him and he felt the old
gammy arm and the strength of his powerful
limbs, now gone from him forever, but for the
moment envisaged and powered by Woo.
“Kee... the Androids, they wish us harm.. .’’
And he told the long tale to his mighty mentor.

The ocean beside the Wall’s forest moved heavily,

splashing huge waves upon the bedch side near to
where the old hut stood, giving time-pacer en-
trance to the city ‘of the Androids. The world on
this side of the Wall was named Omar from the
old days before it was built up by robots, named
by the people who built the Wall to keep out some
long forgotten enemy. The great whales in the
water were restless that night; their howling could
be heard for miles around and the dolphins leaped
-and swam through the water faster in the semi-
darkness as the second of the suns sank out of
sight.
134 CABAL: Volume 2
The wide seas moved ponderously across their
vast dwelling and all within them felt the unrest
that came for the first time in many thousands of
years. Never before in the history of the Mandroid
race had such uncertainty dwelled between the
people of the Wall. Now this great edifice of the
past might serve its purpose once again, dividing
the people in aggression. The trees in the forest
spanning one side of the Wall blew in the strong
wind, waving, unsettled too, swinging against
each other and the stone. The scraped footmarks
made by the climbing Mandroid Pinball were —
scratched even more on the stone as the strong
branches brushed against them.
And on the ground, sitting where the hut stood,
undisturbed by the weather, was Woo. The An-
droids, unable to check her chaotic attack on their
city, had thrown her into the time-pacer and she
had emerged at its entrance, this time its exit.
Within moments she would bring Pinball back,
but for the moment she wished to remain in this
beautiful wind and feel it upon her soul. She
wished to release herself from the confines of her
Mandroid state and sail across the sky, but she
knew that she could not, dare not. Pinball was
freer, his longer life as a human gave him less
restrictions and others could carry him for a while
out of his body but if she played games with her
own psyche only harm would come of it. She
would never wish to return to her prison. It was a
primary lesson, taught to them by the Fathers of
their state.
She looked up at the dying sun and thought of
her child, a child she had barely seen and never
held skin to skin. She thought of how he would die
 THE BLACK MOON 135

if the Androids succeeded against the Mandroid.

She could not imagine how this would ever be
prevented. They were greater in number, and
although she could outsmart them for a while their
strength would win in the end.
The sky dimmed and the white scudding clouds
moved into blackness. The sea continued its dis-
turbance and a huge whale burst the surface
and reared its bulk across the wide stretches of
water. Then a shoal of dolphins raced out behind
it and leaped and twisted across. the air, flicking
their skillful fins, waving to her. She sent them
messages, wishing them joy and telling them of
her plight and they responded by swimming
closer, darting through the inner stretches near to
the beach below her. She stepped onto the thick
heavy sand below the edge of the green and a
dolphin swam, darting back and forth, towards
her. To one side stood a promontory of wood, for
a tethered boat, long since gone. The dolphin flap-
ped its fins and moved close enough to touch her.
Woo bent closer to the water and touched the
creature on the snout. It blew great fountains of
water into the air, telling her of the freedom it felt
in the water. Telling her in private thoughts that it
wished freedom for her too. She smiled and gave it
thoughts of thanking, blew it a kiss from the face
of her Mandroid head and waved as it swam out to
the deeper sea once more. It joined the troupe and
the giant whale and continued its leaping and
frolicking. The whale reared high out of the water
and gave a huge bellow, like a dying sea cow,
shrieking so loud that surely the sound must have
been heard a hundred kilometers across the water
and in Charybdis itself.
136 CABAL: Volume 2

It sank back down, slowly and elegantly and

disappeared below the depths of the ocean sur-
face.
Woo drew strength from her powers with these
creatures and began to walk into the forest, back
towards her people.
Lying beside the long pathway through the
forest lay the still inanimate body of the Mandroid
Pinball, and with a single thought she brought it
back to its whole self, drawing her man’s aura into
place around the bionic hulk. Pinball stood,
turned his head slightly, blinked his human eye
and stepped in beside her.
 CHAPTER NINE

Tricks and Treats

‘“Well . . . there is a way.’’ Kee turned from where

he had been standing, looking out onto the veran-
da. ‘‘But at this stage it would be strictly a one-
man operation, or rather a two-Mandroid and
one-Womandroid operation.’’ He said this as
Woo spun a disgruntled thought at him.
‘‘Why, won’t the Council authorize help?’’ Pin-
ball asked.
“No, not yet. They’ll take too much convinc-
ing, we have no taped records of what happened
to you two over there. The Council will want
proof of danger and in any event they only half-
believe that your child will solve their problems.
They’d probably favor letting them take him and
promising it wouldn’t happen again rather than
fight it out.’’
**Yellow-bellied lot,’’ Pinball muttered. Kee

137
138 CABAL: Volume 2
and Woo understood his meaning, not through
the words but through the thoughts that went with
them.
‘‘?’m afraid you must get used to the idea that
we are more or less on our own. Once we’ve
started the ball rolling then they’ll help, but only if
we back them into a corner and make it necessary
that they act. They’ll only do something if there is
danger of an attack, directly, that will endanger
the ‘species’. If they know that their lives are in
danger, that they’re likely to become Androids
that much sooner or even get destroyed altogether,
then they’ll get going.”’
**So, how do we go about that?’’ Woo asked,
unable to pick anything up from Kee’s secretive
mind.
‘““We go over the Wall . . . or rather under it,
and we cause enough trouble to start a fight. At
the same time we plant some unpleasant traps in
their admin. centers or their equivalent so that we
can hit them where it hurts if they come back over
and start blasting us.”’
‘‘Great,’’ said Pinball. ‘‘But there’s no way
they’re going to let you get through that tunnel
again without kicking you to bits and shoving you
right back. It was only because Woo made such a
fantastic fuss that they threw her out in one piece.
If they’d been able to get near her through all that
flying hea I’m sure they’d have smashed her
to iron filings.’’
“*He’s right Kee,’’ Woo chipped in.
_ **No, we don’t have to go that way. There’s
another.”’
*‘Ah-ha, a trick up your sleeve, eh Kee?’’ Pin-
ball admired Kee, a man after his own. . . head?
 THE BLACK MOON 139

“*T thought there was only one tunnel under the

Wall that you could get through,’’ Woo said.
““No... when they first built the subway system
under Charybdis they started at a point where
some previous inhabitant or visitor had already
built one.”’
‘You mean the people who built the Wall?”’
‘*T imagine so, though there is no reason to sup-
pose that it was necessarily them. However, it
could be that either they had the use of this
machine or someone left it here to help them.’’
*‘Just a minute, I’m lost, you didn’t mention
any machine before.”’
“Oh, didn’t I? I’m sorry, the machine I’m
referring to of course is the train.”’
‘“‘What train?’’ Woo almost whooped this,
frustrated by Kee’s old man tricks.
“*The underground train that’s been standing in
the subways for thousands of years . . . the one
that stands inside the spaceship.”’
‘““SPACESHIP! ! ! !’? Woo stood up, her face
completely disbelieving. »
““Yes, the spaceship they presumably used to
build the Wall, or someone carelessly left it here if
that wasn’t its purpose, for without a doubt it is
big enough to carry almost all the stones in the
whole Wall put together.’’
“‘Oh, come on Kee, you’re playing some joke
on us. . .no one has ever mentioned a spaceship
before... or atrain. . . where could such a large
craft as you suggest ever be without everyone
knowing about it?’’ Woo sat back down again,
convinced that Kee was teasing them.
“Underground, of course . . . just underground
. . but there’s a track that leads under the Wall
 140 CABAL: Volume 2

and it goes directly from the spaceship where the

train is housed to the city beyond the ocean on the
other side. I know, I’ve read about it.”’
‘*¥ don’t believe it,’’ Woo said.
“Tdo...’’ Pinball said.
Kee stepped to his bookshelf where he kept
various tattered volumes, all many hundreds of
years old.
‘“Here, this is the one.’’ The title on the front of
the book read: ‘‘CHARYBDIS, A manual of early
transport System.’’ It looked very dry and boring
until Kee opened it and inside was a map showing
a labyrinth of underground rail tracks running
criss-cross through the planet’s ground, across
and back and around where the Wall now stood,
but no mention of any Wall.
‘*Listen to this.’? Kee sat down beside Woo, on
the arm of her chair and read. ‘‘The system shown
on the opposite page was specifically devised for
one project which has recently begun on Charyb-
dis, that, of course, of the building of the GREAT
WALL. To this end the tracks for the train have _
been set below the level where the foundations of ~
the Wall will begin, that is, a base level of no lower
than two hundred and forty meters (Kee thought
~ this out for a millisecond, translating the Charyb-
dian measurement for Pinball!) below the ground
level at a sea level. The train itself will be housed
in the ‘Charybdinius’ . . . I suppose that would be
the rough translation . . .”’ Kee put the book on
his lap and looked at Pinball and Woo.
‘So... there is a train . . . or there was then
... Woo said doubtfully.
“It’s still there, I went to see it today, after Pin-
ball came back the first time.’’
 THE BLACK MOON 141

‘‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go and

take a look.”’
**T thought you might want to, so I’ve laid on
transport, only it’s a long way off, you see. . . and
the Council aren’t too keen for anyone outside the
Council to see it. They feel it might give people
ideas . . . or something.”’
“*They’re dead right . . .’’ Pinball said as they
left the room and walked out of the house, along
the beach.

Woo.and Pinball looked at one another as Kee

walked directly towards the great prism that stood
on the sand.
‘‘What’s he going to do, bump into it, or walk
through it?’’ Pinball turned and whispered to
Woo.
**1’d believe anything after today .. . . I thought
I knew. him . . . but he’s got more secrets up his
sleeve than a Mandroid magician.’’
As Kee came closer to the side of the vast piece
of sculptured glass, a door in the side opened and
revealed it to be something more than a simple
light-refraction unit.
**Good heavens, you never told me. . .”” Woo
sounded vaguely hurt.
“No, well, one doesn’t tell one’s confidant every-
thing. What is a confidant for but to learn secrets?
... If you knew them all at once you would cease to
be my confidant, and that wouldn’t do at all...
come on, get in, this’ll get us where we want to go
more quickly than a subway train.’’
Inside the craft, they stood, huddled together in
the narrow chamber which began suddenly to shift
downward.
142 CABAL: Volume 2

“You mean this thing is buried in the sand?’’

Woo almost jumped with joy.
“‘Oh, sure, the prism is only -the tip of the
iceberg, so to speak.’’ Kee tried to hide it but he
was obviously proud of the device. Pinball was
simply struck dumb by the creatures he had
somehow become one of. A people who swore
passivity and lived by some secret, silent code of
honor and self-guilt, and here they were traveling
down into a vast spacecraft buried in the sand, off
to visit some even vaster spacecraft buried even
deeper. Things were heating up.
The elevator stopped and Kee opened a door
somehow, without moving a finger. They stepped
into a room which must have been at least ten
times the size of the top end of the prism in the
sand. Kee walked across to a control panel and
began touching various light switches. A moment
later the power in the craft rumbled. Somewhere
below there must have been a jet housing to take
the thrust of this huge ship, as they began to lift
almost immediately through the sand. Pinball
tried to estimate the sort of capacity the engines
must contain to carry the machine not only off the
planet surface but out of millions of tons of sand.
“‘The ship is in a sort of sheath Pinball, there is
no pressure on the hull except a small amount at
the top where the sand lies around the edge to
disguise the true nature of the prism. The glass top
itself is reinforced plastic and makes a perfect
spearhead. Pretty clever, don’t you think.’’
‘**Yes, I do, I really do.’’ It was all he could say,
though he thought far more, but the surprise and
confusion of it all left him breathless.
They lifted high off the planetary surface and
 THE BLACK MOON 143

raced through the atmosphere, emerging above

the planet in seconds. Then the craft leveled into
orbital flight and traveled around the vast globe.
*‘Look out through the screens here, you can
see just how big Charybdis is.’’ Pinball moved to
where Kee indicated, and he and Woo watched the
massive bulk of the world they had left. It was so
huge that even at this height from the ground there
was no way they could see the true size.
The colors were mostly green below them, with
clouds scudding around and evidence of weather
movements, swirling in drifts everywhere. The line
of the Wall was still visible, but only as a thin scar
on the surface of the planet.
Land masses were obscured, their shape chang-
ing with the moving cloud formations, and the
great oceans showed a blue-green, stretching in far
greater areas than the land, though cut sharp on
the edge of the Wall where it was visible.
**We shall be landing in a few minutes, nearly
20,000 kilometers from my estates, a place where
the Mandroid has not ventured for centuries, ex-
cept for me that is.”’
‘(Do the Council know what you’re up to?’’
Woo asked. :
*“No, not at all. They’d fall into a dead faint if
they found out, it?s too adventurous for them.’’
Kee looked very pleased with himself as he sat
before the control unit, its lights blinking under
the direct control of his Mandroidal brain.
They swept over the planet for another fifteen
minutes on Pinball’s old watch, still preciously
strapped to his Mandroid wrist, until the rocket
- began to dip back through the atmosphere. Pin-
ball felt a slight increase in the ‘‘G’’ force as they
144 CABAL: Volume 2

were thrust through the magnetic field and then

they shot down directly towards the surface.
The retro-power was fired and the rocket re-
versed its position, turning to face upright once
again, dropping slowly down and down until they
felt a thump and various vibrations throughout
the craft.
‘‘There, successful landing. Not bad for an
amateur,’’ Kee said.
‘*T thought Mandroids were scared of heights,’’
Pinball said.
‘‘Myth—I’ve several thousand flying hours un-
der my belt . . . and this thing practically flies itself
anyway.”’
‘‘Who built it?’’ Pinball asked as he unstrapped
the belts about his middle.
‘I did, of course, with a little help from the
astronomer fanatics in the city.”’
‘Astronomers on Charybdis?’’
““Yes, there are a few of us who reach out for
the stars. They thought they were building an ex-
perimental rocket that would be used for ob-
serving the nearby moons, but of course the Coun-
cil banned any such activities and not unnaturally
handed over the work to me for control. I felt it
my duty to confiscate the rocket and bring it to my
land. ; think they all forgot about it after a
while.’
Pinball looked at Woo, who smiled up at hiss:
They climbed into the elevator and dropped
down to the surface through a hatch in the side of
the rocket, landing neatly on the ground, nearly a
hundred meters below. The land here was barren,
with mostly rock outcrop and dark-colored red
 THE BLACK MOON 145

earth everywhere. There were few hills or contours

in the ground and everything looked sparse.
*“No one ever lived here, or no one of our race.
The previous people who occupied this planet, the
ones who must have built the Wall, used this as a
base of operations, probably because it was well
out of the way of inhabitants. There’s still some
evidence of living quarters if you look closely
enough at the ground scars. The rocks over there
have been blown by some sort of explosive in the
last two or three thousand years. And a small
village was built just over that sandrise, at about
the same time. This must have been where the
workers had their base.’’
About two hundred meters to the north of
. where they stood, beyond the rocket, was a taller
structure, maybe ten meters out of the ground. It
was metallic and shaped like a water tank, raised
up on slender metal joists. At its top was a wheel
and a hoist mechanism. As they came closer to it,
Pinball saw that it was not as primitive as it had
appeared from a distance but highly advanced, the
wheel forming only some kind of decoration.
**T think they made it to look like an old mine
shaft elevator. Don’t ask me why, a sense of
humor I suppose. In fact it is atomically powered,
like everything else beneath it. The power plant is
buried hundreds of meters below ground and that
shaft is simply a landmark. There are inscriptions
on it which I have never been able to decipher, so I
can’t enlighten you regarding the language of
these ancestors of ours.”’
Pinball and Woo followed Kee like tourists
about to be shown an ancient monument, walking
146 CABAL: Volume 2

over the red earth and low rock crops. The

monument was right before them now and at its
base was a door.
Kee touched the side of the door where a panel
was sunk into the surface. The door immediately
slid back. as
“You managed to decipher that, though,’’ Pin-
ball said as they entered the dark inside.
“*Yes, well, that wasn’t hard. I just walked up to
it the first time and hit it. It’s worked ever since.”’
Woo laughed from a slightly cavernous chest —
and looked up at Pinball, not quite sure whether
he would appreciate the sound that emitted from
her. She could not remember having laughed since
becoming a Mandroid . . . and the sensation was
strange, though it told her how pleasant she felt in
her human brain, a certain adventurous freedom.
Pinball smiled down at her, feeling what she felt,
feeling it himself because of her.
‘How do you know, Kee, that it will open again
once we want to get out?’’
“TI don’t, Pinball, I don’t . . . but then that’s
part of the fun. In any event I thought we intended
to exit on the other side of the Wall.”’
‘That must be a good 20 thousand kilometers
from here.’’
‘*At least that, I should think, but just wait and
see what’s going to take us there.’’ Kee turned on
a switch inside the tower and the place was im-
mediately floodlit.
‘Best thing about atomic power is it tends to
last a long time, this place has been dormant for a
long time and yet the moment I touched that
switch the first time I came exploring, the lights all
 THE BLACK MOON 147

came on without a flicker, wonderful thing, tech-

nology.”’
*“*We’ve got atomic power back in Charybdis,
what’s the difference with this place?’’ Pinball
asked, following Kee and Woo into an elevator
shaft entrance.
*‘Oh, I don’t know, about eight thousand years
I guess, somehow the idea of a race that lived that
long ago being as advanced, even more advanced
when you see what they were capable of below, it’s
all a shock to me. I was reading some books that I
transported from your Earth before we brought
you here, books about your ancient civilizations,
the Greeks and the Romans, the Egyptians in par-
ticular. They were as advanced in their own way as
the Earth people of your time and yet they lived
thousands of years before you. How come we
don’t develop? It’s always the same. You know,
people of one time always think they are the mid-
dle and the future. They imagine that they are the
forerunners of an even more advanced civilization
that will grow and grow. They say things like—‘In
medical science we have reached a point where
there is little more to learn’ or ‘as far as astro-
physics is concerned there is no doubt in our
minds that there can be no other forms of life in
the universe, or no other forms like us.’ I mean
they really say that sort of thing and mean it. They .
believe that they are invincible, that the race will
live on and on. And then poof! They vanish from
the face of their own planet, nothing left except
the odd growth of vegetation or a few animals.
_ Sooner or later though, along comes another
group to start again. It’s like father and son I sup-
 148 CABAL: Volume 2

pose. Each new race starts again but picks up

some of the old knowledge later in its life.’’
Pinball listened to Kee’s musings with amuse-
ment, and Woo held his hand tightly as they went
down the shaft in the huge elevator room, at a
speed which would have unsettled their stomachs,
had they any.
‘*Now friends, you are in for a shock . . . so be
warned.’’
The doors opened and both Pinball and Woo
looked out into what they had expected to be a
large chamber with some form of rapid transport
in it. Instead they looked out onto open land. Or
so it seemed. The area in front of them was so
huge that atmospheric clouds had formed in the
roof, or Pinball imagined there had to be a roof.
The experience was eerie because they had the
distinct impression—no, knowledge—that they
had traveled from the surface of the planet down
and yet now they stepped out onto the surface
again. But it wasn’t.
The first impression was of size but the second
look startled them to the spot where they stood.
What had looked faintly like a blue shape on the
far side of the massive chamber proved to be a
colossal craft, a huge, vast machine that filled the
_ entire hangar, as hangar this place must be.
‘““Good God, what the hell is that?’’ Pinball
gasped.
“It’s a spaceship,’’ Woo shouted, running off
towards the giant, then stopping, waiting for Pin-
ball to catch her, hesitating as she realized the
distance between where they stood and the craft.
Its size and the size of the hangar, the shock of
looking at such vastness underground, all con-
 THE BLACK MOON’) ~ 149

tributed to deceive even their robotic eyes, giving

them perspectives that made nonsense of logic.
“*It’s a spaceship, all right. A very handsome
one, too.’’
**You said it, come on, let’s get over there,’’
Pinball shouted to Kee.
*‘There’s transport here if you wish it.’’ He
moved to the side of where they stood and touched
a small ground trailer. He climbed into it and
traveled along to pick them up.
**How the hell did they ever get the thing in
here, and why, what could they have done with it,
why did they want such a giant of a spaceship, I
mean it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever heard of,
what would it have been for?’’
Pinball rattled off all these questions without
stopping.
**‘Which question do you want answered first?”
Kee looked at him, smiling, pleased with the effect
his little adventure was having.
“In any event, there is only one answer to any
of them because I don’t know. I don’t know why
they built it, how they got it down here and I don’t
know what they would have used it for. I only
know one thing. People who can build a Wall as
big and as long as the one that stands above this
place would have been able to build that space-
craft with their eyes shut.’”?
“Yes, I hadn’t thought of it that. way. They
must have been some people.”’
‘*Evidently.’’
They traveled the rest of the distance across the
hangar floor in complete silence, more from
awesome shock than anything else, for the decep-
tive perspectives had not even begun to tell them
150 CABAL: Volume 2

the truth when they had stood over by the elevator

doors. As they moved closer to the machine,
traveling quite fast, they seemed to be getting
closer only very slowly. And as they realized their
errors of calculation at each new ten-meter dis-
tance of the trailer, they sat in so they felt greater
shock at the sheer size of the spaceship, or
whatever it was.
It was blue, completely blue all over, with
sweeps and curves along its surface, and a wheel-
like arm at the top of one side with a central hub
of green. A huge disk lay beneath this wheel-like ©
aperture that looked like an enormous electro-
telescope or radar. The curve of the metal struc-
ture was so elegant, so clean-cut and smooth, as
though painted in the air with the sweep of an
artist’s hand. The whole mushroom structure sat
atop massive legs that measured hundreds of
meters across their round base. These legs carried,
halfway up, a set of ‘‘L’’-shaped buttresses that
must have been levelers to raise or lower the top
of the craft, nearer or further from the ground.
The center of the legs was silver, the only part of
the craft not colored a bright sky blue. And at the
very base, where the legs splayed out like two
party dresses, were the rocket thrust housings.
Pinball could not for a moment imagine what
power it must have taken to raise this monstrous
craft off the ground. It was truly a giant; a giant
among giants and now as they approached it,
closer and closer, he began, just began, to be able
to estimate its true stature.
They were completely dwarfed by it, absolutely
tiny against something that showed the builders to
be extraordinary engineers. For surely no people
 THE BLACK MOON 151
would have built such an edifice simply to look at.
It had to fly, and if it flew the people had to be
giants themselves. Eventually they were beneath
it. Beneath a structure bigger than most of the old
New York skyscrapers that Pinball had known on
Earth, looking up into the arms and branches of it
like astonished dwarfs before a massive giant.
‘*There is a door over here.’’ Kee brought them
back to reality.
“‘Are we going for a ride?’’ Pinball asked
facetiously.
‘‘Not exactly, at least not in the ship itself... .
come, you’ll see.’’ Kee led them into the entrance
and they walked down well-lit corridors, now in-
side a building, unaware of the size of the place
anymore, only that it must have taken Kee days of
exploration to find his way around.
“Yes, it did,’’ Kee commented, picking up
Woo’s thoughts. ‘‘I actually, spent almost a whole
week here just looking around, it was like being a
child again, really fascinating. But come, we have
a long way to go.”’
They walked down corridors, past doors,
hatches and into elevators through a labyrinth of
entrances and exits, down a hundred narrow and
wide alleyways until they could have been any-
where aboard the craft. Both Pinball and Woo
had completely lost all sense of direction and were
forced to use their cybernetic brains to map the
way they had come, instinctively planning where
they might find a way out.
“I put my computers to good use memorizing
this trip the first time. I think even my best digitals
got fed up with cancellations and returns. But I
think we have it straight now. Yes, here we are.”’
152 CABAL: Volume 2

They entered what seemed to be the umpteenth

doorway and stepped across a hatch bar into a
large chamber, inside which was a train.
‘*My, my, that’s some train.”’
‘‘That, my dear, is a train-and-a-half. It is
positively the biggest and most beautiful train I
ever did see.’’ Kee glowed as they approached the
machine. It stood about twenty times their height
and some thirty meters long.
“*T estimate it weighs about five hundred tons.”’
It was golden in color, with thousands of pipes
and levers all over it. The central chamber was the
largest part of the bulk and must have contained
its own atomic power plant. The back cab was
built just like an old steam train and the whole
thing resembled a vehicle Pinball had once seen
back on Earth in a museum. The whole train sat
on about ten wheels, all metal and all spoked like
the old steam train, but in effect it was two trains,
with double the power houses, one at each side on
the front and one on each side at the back.
‘*It’s magnificent, do you mean that we are ac-
tually going to try and travel in that to the other
side of the Wall?’’ Pinball asked, not believing for
a moment.
‘*Well, the people who built it did just that. As
far as I can gather this train and several others like
it were used to tow the stones that built the Wall.
It has a capacity of around three hundred thou-
sand horsepower, measured in your own scale Pin-
ball. It could pull a section of the Wall down if
you wished. The hull contains an atomic power
plant and it generates at least one hundred and
fifty thousand brake horsepower. That thing
would be strong enough to drag this spaceship
 THE BLACK MOON 153

along by the scruff of its neck. I thought it might

be fun to get it going again.’’
‘‘Fun ... you must be crazy Kee. . . how are
you going to get it out of here?’’ Pinball walked
over to the cab end and began climbing up to-
wards the entrance.
‘‘Simple, really, there are hoists on the roof
there, all we have to do is attach them and then
find the control system that opens the hatches and
lowers the train onto the ground. In case you
hadn’t worked it out, we are in a section of the
spacecraft that overhangs the ground. As far as I
can tell, the release will just open the ground
below where the train stands and then it should
drop neatly through. There are ramps under the
ground here, and here.’’ Kee pointed to hatch
lines across, running parallel to the train lines.
‘‘These will carry the train down to the ground
and then all we have to do is work out how to get
the tracks that must run beneath the ground out-
side up onto the surface. Then we have to make
sure that the train fits onto the rails correctly as we
lower it. ..then.. . as you say, I think—‘Bob’s
your uncle’.’’
- *°What?’’ Woo began to laugh. ‘‘ ‘Bob’s your
uncle’ . . . what does that mean?’’ She burst out
laughing at the phrase.
“‘A perfectly good British Earth saying Woo,
nothing to laugh about,’’ Pinball mocked.
“It’s ridiculous . . . what does it mean?’’ Kee
transmitted the meaning to Woo.
** “Bob’s your uncle’ . . . what has that to do
with... ‘O.K. there you are’ . . . or what for that
matter has ‘O.K. there you are’ got to do with
_what we’re doing .. . oh, I give up... can’t we go
154 CABAL: Volume 2

back to talking Charybdian . . . music songs are

better than gibberish . . . you’ve got me doing it
now.”’
‘“‘Come on, let’s get this baby on the road.”’
Pinball was already in the cab.
In the walls of the chamber, which proved to be
hollow, there were power packs with small
thrusters on them. Kee and Woo each donned one
of these and prepared for the lowering. The con-
trol units were just small hand remote controls
which brought down the hoist mechanism, in-
Kee’s skillful hands and attached to the sides of a
base unit that already sat underneath the train.
The bottom of the unit was lined with ten thick,
reinforced rubber buffers to protect the whole
package on landing.
Once in place Kee raised the hoist a few meters
off the ground before opening the floor.
Without the slightest signs of strain the train, all
550 tons of it, lifted into the air and swung gently
to and fro, held laterally by wire supports that ex-
tended from the sides and would extend at
precisely the right tension as the hoist let the load
down.
Pinball peered over the side of the cab and
looked down through the hatch below the train.
““Gee, that’s a long drop.”’
‘One hundred and twenty-five meters,’’ Kee
said.
He touched the descender control and the great
train began to drop very slowly and regularly
through the hatch. The lateral tension supports let
out their length, holding the machine from a
sideways swing and the gentle whir of the motors
 THE BLACK MOON 155

in the ceiling of the chamber could be heard, un-

strained, steady.
“Hey, shouldn’t I be wearing one of those?”’
Pinball suddenly thought that if the train should
slip and fall he would go with it, and Kee and Woo
were the only ones wearing jet packs.
**T’ll be there quick enough if she goes,’’ Woo
assured him.
Pinball acknowledged her thought without feel-
_ ing entirely sure of its practicality. But there was
no panic. The drop took twenty minutes and Kee
hovered beside the bulk of the train, looking tiny
against its vastness. Woo was on the ground now,
instructing Kee across their linked Mandroidal
brains, giving him the distance and adjusting the
level at each end of the hoist.
With a gentle thump and a slight bounce on the
buffered base the train was down.
‘There we are, simple as flying a kite.’’
“‘What about the rails?’’ Pinball shouted, un-
necessarily.
“‘Up we go again, I just wanted to see how it
landed first, practice run, you know.’’
On the ground below the train, as it lifted off
again, there were fine scars. Kee touched off
another control on the hand unit he carried, as he
slipped onto the ground himself and the scars
bared their skin and let up rails. The rails were on
a circular turn unit and as he opened them the rails
shot off into the distance and flew out of the great
chamber like a shot of metal sprayed out of a can.
*“Jesus, that was impressive.’’
i) “‘There’s our track to the unknown Android
_worlds,’’ Kee commented as he walked closer to
156 CABAL: Volume 2

the train, beginning to lower it again, this time

even more precisely onto the rails themselves.
This done he lifted up on his jet pack and
having returned the hoist to the hatch, he took the
unit back inside the spacecraft, deposited it in the
Wall openings and touched off the hatch release
button that closed everything up. Before the
hatches reached the shut position he slipped be-
tween the narrowing fissure and out over the train
and the two Mandroid lovers stood together inside
the cab inspecting the mechanics of this monster _
among locomotives.
‘‘Who’s going to drive?’’ Pinball asked hope-
fully.
‘*The one who read all the literature on trains,
that’s who,’’ Kee said.
*“Oh, I see, well, can’t you teach us, I mean,
there ought to be at least one co-driver in case of
accident or mishap.”’
‘*Just watch as we go along, you’ll learn soon
enough . . . and don’t forget this isn’t a steam
train or a diesel, it’s atomic powered and fully
automated. All the pipes and paraphernalia on the
sides and around the wheels is just someone with
an imagination, having fun.’’ Kee put the jet pack
carefully inside a cupboard at the back of the
cabin of the train and started turning the rail unit
beneath the locomotive around to face the other
way and join up with the earth-sprung rails that
headed for the Wall.
‘*All ready?’’ he asked.
‘*Ready, captain,’’ Pinball laughed.
‘Then let’s be having you.”’
‘‘Who, having who, what . . .’” Woo muttered.
 THE BLACK MOON 157

‘‘Never mind. . . never mind. . .”’ And Kee

_ fired the atomic generators with a huge roar of ©
electric power that set the power pack and crashed
the engines into their steady, throbbing rhythm.
They were away.
 CHAPTER TEN

Home and Abroad

In the long Charybdian night, by the edge of the

great Wall, stood five awesome and dangerous
Androids. They looked around strangely aware
that they stood on ground forbidden to them now
for hundreds of years. They knew their history,
their living past and the memory remained as a
dimmed scar, fought against, dreamed of and
hated. The childhood they remembered best and
loved more. Like vampires they were without life
but aware that in their everlasting life they wished,
in secret robot moments, only to be alive again. So
they swore to destroy that which would destroy —
them given the chance, and with hatred in their
cybernetic brains they would do it thoroughly and
indiscriminately. All this on their way to find the
child, the young boy given birth through a woman
and a cancerless man, the first boy in a potential

159
160 CABAL: Volume 2

future that would eventually no longer yield the

all-powerful, magical Android brain, suffused as
it was now with the learning and the knowledge of
childhood.
Their task was a psychotic one, a terrible di-
lemma to them for they still carried this strong
desire for the past, for their humanidy and for
membership of the elite club of living that existed _
here on this side. Yet they knew there was no hope
of itandso....
The five figures shifted through the complete
darkness beyond the Wall, not taking the subway
of course for fear, even in the middle of the night,
of meeting Mandroids who would instantly give
the warning to all others in Charybdis. They
strode through the undergrowth headed on their
powerful, untiring legs towards the city, two hun-
dred kilometers distant. It would take most of the
night but there would still be some darkness at the
end for them to complete their task and go into
hiding. None of them knew exactly what was in
store for them once the child was dead. They gave
it no thought, but moved ahead, fast.
None saw them, none heard a whisper of their
coming. None suspected what they intended for
the only ones who knew anything of their coming
were traveling in the opposite direction, hundreds
of thousands of kilometers away and several hun-
dred meters below the ground.
As the night entered its twenty-eighth hour the
five reached the city. Here they took on the false
eye that their scientists had produced for them to
wear. Attached over the right Android eye it
looked effectively like the real thing in the semi-
 THE BLACK MOON ~ 161

light and so long as none looked too closely, nor

questioned with great care across the inner brain
waves, they would be safe. But as insurance, all
five separated and began their hunt through the
city.
They knew the possible places and each kept the
brain channels open to receive any information
from Mandroids in the vicinity. Thoughts might
give the game away . . . or so they hoped.
From remembered maps in their complex brains
they knew the possible hiding places. .They knew
the hospitals, the children’s isolation centers.
They knew that there were around fifty likely
localities and between them, in constant contact
on an unused channel they split the task among
them, moving quickly but not too quickly.
By the thirtieth hour of the dark night they had
covered several square kilometers of the vast city
and one had picked up information which he
relayed to his compatriots. The child was in a
home. It was a specially isolated dwelling that had
been taken over for the purpose. The whole
building had been sealed off so that the child
could have maximum movement and yet not be in
any contact with the outside air. Mandroids
guarded him more as playmates and had to
pass through thorough decontamination before
entering each time. The Androids cared little for
- guch niceties. If they carried the cancer on their
bodies, should they have enough warmth in their
bodies to do so, they could only hope it would fall
upon the tender child and do their job for them.
Death was their aim and the only result for them
while they existed on this side of the great Wall.
162 CABAL: Volume 2

Within a further hour one of them had found

the house and the other four were on their way
across the city to join him.
He stood at a distance in a dark alleyway,
awaiting their coming and watching for progress
in or out of the dwelling. The entire outside had
been sealed off and there was no sign of move-
ment for the moment. His instructions were to
keep still and quiet and he did so with the per-
fection that only a robot could achieve.
Thirty minutes passed before the others arrived,
one after another, and then all five shifted out of ~
the alley and towards the house. The first, the
leader, stepped up to the door and touched the en-
try button. A buzz sounded inside and one of the
Mandroids who played with the boy stepped
towards the entrance door. He picked up nothing
from outside but felt no apprehension at that. He
opened the door and felt the intense heat as a
blaster beam hit him square across the base of his
neck. He put out a huge powerful hand and the
long, strong fingers wrapped around the throat of
the attacking leader Android. In the anger and
shock of the fight his hand was so strong that its
fingertips broke through the thick fabric of the
Android’s skin, bursting sinews and wiring sets as
it went. A second Android fired again, taking off
the whole arm, but the move did little to prevent
severe damage to the leader who was faced by the
other Mandroid arm which swung like a giant
sledgehammer with the force of half a ton and hit
him square in the middle of his robotic face,
knocking joints in his shoulders completely away
from their base. The Android’s head snapped and
 THE BLACK MOON 163

fell backward, leaving a failing and disabled An-

droid body attempting to find reason without
sight. The grotesque body, still with one hand at-
tached to its severed throat at the front, staggered
back down the steps and knocked one of the other
Androids off his feet on to the road outside. The
almost headless body careened maniacally across
the street, crashing against the walls around it and
making a horrendous noise. A third Android
turned and blasted the stricken leader with one
wide-angled burst of heat, smashing the whole
body into cinders. The Mandroid on the steps
moved swiftly, severely damaged but still with his
human and his Mandroid brain working at full
pitch. He signaled to others inside the house and
also to the center of operations in the nearest city
authority in it. At the same time he lashed out with
the stump of his severed arm and sent another un-
certain Android down onto his back. With his
good hand he took out a blaster from the holster
on his belt and fired a clean shot through the chest
of the Android who carried the nearest weapon.
The shot cut a neat hole to the center of the An-
droid brain unit and put the robot out of com-
mission. Two more remained wholly on their feet
and the Mandroid, still without help from his
colleagues, rushed out of the door, stood with the
blaster raised and picked off the right arm of one
of them taking the blaster he carried too. He
turned towards the last Android to fire a shot but
was too late. The fire from this gun had already
left the muzzle of the weapon and its aim was true.
It burst through the plate glass over the Man-
_ droid’s human eye and cut deep into the rein-
164 CABAL: Volume 2

forced skull unit, smashing the brain with the

resulting shrapnel. The Mandroid was Mandroid
no longer and his body crumpled to the ground.
The one victorious Android leaped over the
body followed by another who had recovered
from a heavy fall. They both bounded into the
house.

Thousands of kilometers away across Charybdis,

Woo stood in the cab of the giant train as it rushed
through the great, high-walled tunnel under the
ground. She suddenly grasped at Pinball’s sleeve-
and gripped him hard.
‘‘Something’s wrong . . . something back in the
city, something with our child... Kee. . . the An-
droids...’’
Kee picked up the same message a moment
later, sent by the Mandroid who had soon died,
holding the door on his own.
**You’re right, they’re after him now... . one of
us must go...’’
‘Woo ... send Pinball and give him your
magic, quickly ...’’
Woo screwed up her brain and forced every inch
of her strength into her thoughts, a loud gasp of
anger and pain burst from her mouth and Pin-
ball’s body went stiff, his head thrust back as the
soul, the aura from the humanidy lifted out of
him. That very second he had gone and arrived.
Woo had played small tricks, dangerous tricks
with time and thrust Pinball back just a few sec-
onds to where the Androids were first entering the
doorway having dispatched the Mandroid. He
stood there behind them and carrying more mystic
power in his head than ever he would again, he
 THE BLACK MOON 165

lifted one hand and shouted in a deep and

dangerous voice.
The two Androids stopped dead in their tracks,
knowing that what stood behind them was not
something they wished to encounter but knowing
also that if they did not turn they would be
destroyed before they took another step.
Facing them now was a ghost; the ghost of a
full-grown human with a bald head and mighty
muscular shoulders, one withered arm and huge
powerful legs, standing wide apart. The one hand
‘pointed at them, as he spoke.
**Stop. You will never see the world again. . .”’
Pinball’s specter raised his strong arm higher as
one of the Androids lifted his blaster and fired.
The heat seared through the aura as though
nothing were there and left no mark or change,
save a withering of the hot air. The raised ghostly
-arm lifted still higher and strange, fullsome
sounds could be heard in the air. The same sounds
that came with a storm, beginning soft and rising
to a wild crescendo. Then the arm came down and
a great flash of electricity streaked from the
finger, sending a deadly bolt to the heart of the
heartless robot.
The whole Android incandesced, his body lit up
like a wild firework splattering and flashing with
gold and silver colors, the inners of his intricate
making firing in spurts of changing color. He
yelled with that warbled cry that would come from
a dying machine with a human touch and the
screech could be heard for hundreds of meters
throughout the city. His arm raised like a
drowning man grasping for the air, his head thrust
back in mechanical agony, the Android spat fire
166 CABAL: Volume 2

from his plastic lips and exploded with an enor-

mous crashing blast, the weapon in his hand
overheating with his body.
Within seconds he was a glowing ember, wingin
a crumpled heap upon the ground.
There was so much smoke and mess that Pin-
ball could not see what effect the blasted robot
had had on the other who had been standing right
alongside.
Pinball slipped into the doorway, ready to
tackle the other one but found him gone. There
was a strange eerie scream that Pinball knew came ~
from Woo across the distance. She somehow
switched his position again, this time up to the top
of the house and he found himself looking directly
across a room where the other Android had
already killed another Mandroid and stood with
the child in his hands, still wrapped in clothes
which had. covered his sleep. The dangers were
twofold. The seal that kept the air out of the house
and with it the cancer was now broken, so that
cancer cells would certainly be there, hovering
around and ready to attack the tiny defenseless
child, but even more immediate was the manic
robot ready to kill with one twist of his powerful
wrist.
Pinball lifted his strong arm once again and
carried the child through some kinetic energy
away from the Android’s grasp, as easily as
though he had taken candy from the child.
The Android turned and glared across at the
ghost he saw, knowing it to be more powerful than
he but knowing, too, that he possessed many of
the magic tricks taught to him when he was a child
in Charybdis.
 THE BLACK MOON 167

He set his thoughts to work and trained the idea

of pain upon the specter. The pain was trans-
mitted back to Woo who screamed out in agony,
the sound racing through Pinball’s brain. For the
first time he took on the attack himself, shoulder-
ing what had been given as attack to Woo. He
covered the pain carried in his own mind, and
turning like a slow magician he willed the room
out of time.
With the slightest twitch they were back into the
past. The smallest feeling told Pinball that with
Woo0’s help he had taken them back to a place and
time before he should even have been there. The
house would still be sealed, the Androids no
longer even at the door and the whole attack still
yet to come. Yet before him stood the confused
Android and the dead Mandroid. Pinball still held
the child and yet everything else outside that room
was back, back, back in the past . . . some thirty
Charybdian minutes. Pinball laid the child back
upon his bed, took hold of the Android and
twisted off his mechanical head, with one huge
turn of his single arm, wrapped around it. He took
hold of the great body and with superhuman
strength thrust it through the window. In so doing
he burst the time barrier but not the seal. There
was a bang, a muffled sound that imploded, the
glass and plastic sheeting smashing out and then in
again. The Android was outside and Pinball was
inside. He turned and stepped out of the room,
having made sure that the child slept. Down the
stairs and through the seal without encountering
another soul. Once outside he looked upon the
_ five Androids as they stood by the doorway, just
_ ready to make their attack. With one mighty roar
168 CABAL: Volume 2

he blasted them all to kingdom come and returned

to the train before he had left.

A few hours later the train was under the Wall.

They knew that there was every chance that the
Androids would launch a more ambitious attack
over the Wali and that next time they would
probably succeed. The Mandroid sleepiness would
not bring about any victories against a concerted
attack.
Soon they knew that some platform or stop was
not far along the tunnel as the train’s control.
panel showed an indication that it was reaching
the end of the track.
‘‘Have you any idea what we are going to do
once we reach the city?’’ Pinball asked.
‘‘Not exactly, but largely sabotage I should
think. Something that will give us a chance to
prepare ground back home.”’’
‘‘Well, here we are, so you had better think fast,
my friend.’’
They felt the train’s automatic power slow. The
massive wheels began to decelerate until they
passed into a huge chamber, somewhat like the
one they had left on the other side. The train
stopped and the atomic power plant whirred down
to a steady rhythm.
This was it.
‘‘How do I turn this thing off?’’ Pinball asked -
jovially, covering the adrenaline in his simulated
breast.
Kee touched a button and the rumbling engine
ground to nothing. .
‘Come, let’s see what we’re in for.’’? They
 THE BLACK MOON 169

stepped down from the cab and set off out of the
chamber.
On the other side of the exit from the chamber
was another large hatch-door. Kee touched a con-
trol on the Wall and the hatch-door opened. All
three of them stopped in the doorway and looked
out on to a long walkway that was raised in the
center of a bigger than big vault. It was truly the
biggest inside vault that Pinball had imagined,
stretching out of sight before them and dropping
down on either side of the walkway to depths that
were not visible. Above their heads, too, its roof
was many hundreds of meters high.
‘“Wow, what a place.’’ Pinball stretched his
head back to look up at the walls. Each of them,
one on either side, about one hundred meters to
their left.and right, was lined with small open-
ended coffin-like drawers. The panels on the front
of the drawers were all marked in the language of
the Mandroids and Kee read off what he could
see.
**They are codes, numbers, references. I would
say they referred to Androids.”’
““You mean all those drawers are full of An-
droids?’’ Woo asked.
**So it would seem. They must be. After all An-
droids are Androids and mechanical creatures.
There’s no point in having them around if they’re
overcrowding and doing no good. On the other
hand, they might be needed at some point, so
whoever runs this place keeps them on ice until
reinforcements or extra labor is needed, neat
system.”’ *
‘‘Amazing system.’’ They continued along the ©
170 CABAL: Volume 2

parapet for some while until Kee stopped and

lifted one arm.
“*It’s moving,’’ he said.
‘*‘What?’’ Woo stopped beside him.
“It’s moving, the whole thing is moving, the
vaults are on a runway and each row is moving
along very slowly.”’
‘Come on, then, let’s see where it ends up.”’
They moved quickly now, almost running down
the walkway until they stopped again. Here it
became apparent that the vaults were gradually
tilting, and as they progressed further the tilt con-
tinued until the ‘‘coffins’’ were upright. On the
top of each ‘‘coffin’’ the cover was opaque and
through the surface they could see the shape of
what lay inside.
They stopped and looked more closely and then
there was a click further down the row.
“Good God, they’re big enough,’’ said Pinball,
still peering through the coffin in front of him.
‘‘Look . . . over there, one of them’s getting
out.’’
They darted for a stanchion nearby, to hide
from the robot that emerged. It was a true robot.
Not in anyway like the Androids they knew but
much bigger and more cumbersome.
‘‘That’s a battle robot. Built specially as a
fighter. I’ve heard of such things. What a size!”’
Kee stepped out of the hiding place. _-
‘Hey, come back Kee.’’ But the sound of his
move made no difference and even the whispered
warning from Woo made no effect on the progress
of the giant robot. It continued its walk, heavily to
the doorway just beyond where it had come out.
‘‘They’re on some sort of rota system, coming
 THE BLACK MOON 171.

out one by one for duty or something. My God,

there must be millions of them in this place, where
do they all go?’’ Pinball said.
‘*Maybe this is where they’re being built. Maybe
these chambers are the hatching process for the
battle robot.”’
‘Maybe you’re right. That means if they’re
built all the time they must be either destroyed all
the time or they’re being transported off the
planet to all those places that the Androids said
they’d conquered.’’
“I think we’re getting there,’’ Kee said.
**Yes, and I don’t much like where we’re going
either.”’
‘Want to go back?’’ Woo asked, quizzically.
“Sure . . . and spend the rest of our days
fighting off the attacks of the Androids. They’d
send a batch of these bastards sooner or later and
we’d have a rough time beating them off, too.”’
“‘They’d mever send these boys,’’ Kee said.
“That isn’t what they want.’’ He paused.
““Why do you say that?’’ Woo asked.
“‘Because . . . if they are reduced to making
robots for whatever purpose, then they are already
short of strength. They don’t have enough an-
droids and their only source of fresh androids is
from Charybdis; from dying Mandroids. We
provide them with their power and their strength
and they are already supplementing it with vast
numbers of these characters.”’
‘‘That’s what the chief Android said,’’ Pinball
commented.
**So they wouldn’t risk sending mindless battle
_ robots over, in case they knocked out too many
_ Mandroids. In any event I don’t think we would
 172 CABAL: Volume 2
have too much trouble with this. They just need a
good blast and they’d fall.”’ ‘
“‘T can’t be quite sure that’s true . . . they’re big
buggers.’’ Pinball felt insecure.
“Big buggers . . . what funny words you
Earthmen use.’’ Woo nudged Pinball.
‘‘Come on, let’s see where he’s going.’’ Kee led
the way out. They followed.
Pinball remembered coming in through the tun-
nel under the Wall, remembered how the Android
_ walked before him, stepping with an empty-
headed step, no thoughts in his dead head. This.
huge battle robot walked the same way. Some-
thing began to gel in Pinball’s head, something
evil.
They came closer to the robot, Kee moving
ahead of them, holding a large-muzzled blaster
that he had carried along with him in the train.
“Stay back, I want to see if this fella knows
we’re here.’’ Kee moved right up to the monstrous
machine and skirted around in front of him. Pin-
ball drew his own blaster and trained it at the cen-
ter of the battle robot’s back. But there was no
need for apprehension, for it did not register Kee
at all. He moved back to them.
‘*We can stick with him. He’s out, only on
motordrive.’’
They entered the great elevators beside the
robot and traveled up. The rise was long and fast,
coming up out of hundreds of meters depth, and
once the elevator began to slow they tucked them-
selves as close together behind the robot’s bulk as
they could. The elevator doors opened and the
machine trundled out.
All three of them followed, darting to either
 THE BLACK MOON 173

side of the open doors and hiding behind a dif-

ferent pillar, each slowly edged around the curve
and looked out, each gasped.
The sight before them sent a shiver through
their mechanical backs, a shock wave that rever-
berated through their human brains and set off an
attack of severe shakes.
**‘Jeeesus . . .”? Pinball hissed. ‘‘It’s like a
dream.”’ ;
A fantastic array. of space launches lined out
below the level where they stood. They were close
to the edge of a high parapet. The battle robot had
set off down a ramp, steep and stepped which led
via a thousand steps to an arena. They were at the
head of an artificial mountaintop which rose out
of the ground and housed the thousand battle
robots on their round of duty. Below them was a
valley of battle craft that made anything Pinball
had ever imagined look like a schoolboy’s field
day. There had to be ten thousand craft,. ten
thousand vast space launches, each lined in precise
order along the ground in the basin that housed
them. Every one was a fighter craft, built for long
and hardy battle with some of-the most futuristic
equipment available to any planet and primed
_ready with wisps of carbon oxidation rising from
the rocket housings. Soon enough there would be
a take-off, or around of take-offs that would send
_ this armada into the sky and out of the atmo-
sphere to do battle somewhere, where there could
only be the most extraordinary war of gargantuan
proportions going on. A war that must have been
carried on, if not perpetrated, by these Androids.
‘‘What the hell are they up to?’’ Pinball asked
Beta 2G
174 CABAL: Volume 2

‘*Your God knows, Pinball, but I dread to think

what harm it would do to Charybdis if they lost .
control.’’
‘*‘He’s right. If this is the fount of it all, then
this planet is the source of aggression. And if they
fail to win whatever battles they fight, this planet
will suffer the consequences.’’ Woo shook with
the thought.
*‘And we came here thinking of dropping some
putrid little bombs around the place. What did we
have in mind?’’
“I don’t know, but. we had certainly better
think again,’’ Kee mumbled.
At the sound of his last words came a siren,
loud and tearing. It crashed across their ears and
through their heads, sounding all over the vast
valley of battle below them. When it had com-
pleted its cacophony the jets of all the rockets
began their buildup. Huge roars of power grew
into a crescendo until each rocket went forward to
the central take-off zone and whisked into the sky
within seconds. One after another they blasted
through the air and up into the atmosphere and
were gone. The whole take-off procedure lasted
maybe fifteen minutes and they were all gone, all
vanished into the great universe, all setting course
in what appeared to be the same direction. Then
silence. Pure, beautiful silence. As Pinball and his
two friends turned their audio receivers back up to
normal levels, a smaller sound came from behind,
the sound of a voice.
‘*I hope you enjoyed our little demonstration of
power, my friends.’’ Pinball whisked around,
drawing the blaster from his belt as he went, and
Kee moved even more quickly. But there was no
 THE BLACK MOON 175

need for their aggression. The creature standing

behind them was a Mandroid.
“Tar,”’ Kee said. ‘‘What .
“Yes Kee, it is Tar. Not what you expected at
all, I imagine.’’
Tar was the head of the Council and a friend to
Kee for as many years as they both had lived
beyond the SETcon.
“*But then we always kept you out, didn’t we?
We knew that you would not approve of what we
did on this side of the Wall.’’
“This . . . this is all your doing?’’ Kee stumbled
the words out.
**Yes ... well, it would be immodest of me to
claim complete rights to all of this. There have
been others before me and with me. Others of the
Council and lower orders of the Mandroids. What
do you think of what we have done? Truly
amazing, wouldn’t you say?’’
‘‘Amazing . . . astonishing is the word,
astonishing . . . and deplorable . . . how could you
have overcome all the training we were given, all
the training of the post-SETcon . . . the teachings
when you were a child, the words of your teachers
that told you to think deep and inward, to build
on the ideas of humanidy .. . this is not
humanidy, this is suicide.’’ Kee spoke in a rush of
emotion.
**I did not expect you to understand, Kee. .
why should you . . . you always did retain too
much of your humanidy. Too much to imagine the
power open to a robot.”’
‘Robot . . . you are a robot. . . that is true.
Only a robot soul be stupid coil to set power
_between his teeth to this extent.”’
176 CABAL: Volume 2

‘‘The Mandroid is dying, Kee. Dying at the rate-

of five percent a year. Each year five percent less
Mandroids come out of SETcon, each year five per-
cent less children are born in Charybdis. Within a
few years that figure will have quadrupled, and grad-
ually we shall become extinct, and then what will
there be? Androids. . . robots and nothing else.’’
‘‘But this is not the way to turn that back.’’ Kee
almost shouted in his fear of what he now saw.
‘“No ... no way to turn it back, but a way to
turn it forward. Power, Kee . . . massive,
unimaginable power, throughout space and time.
You have seen here only our conquest power in
space; in the temporal fields we have even greater
conquests behind us. We have a unique ability,
that of robot logic and strength, coupled with
human response. The perfect combination, magic
and technique. What race of people can lay claim
to such? None other than the Mandroids. We have
conquered more of the universe than you can ever
conceive, more strength lies in our grasp than has
ever lived on any panet and the way is clear for
still greater power.”’
‘‘And you are responsible for it . . . you the
Mandroid . . . not the Androids that ja through
the tunnels une of the Wall.”’
‘“‘They are only workers. What fue. are they
beyond being workers once they have lost the eye?
We hold the brains, the humanidy that is needed
to think out the plans and to give the drive needed
to make all this.’’
‘“You’re mad... all of you... mad... mad
. mad.”’
Kee turned away from Tar, angry and frus-
trated that he saw all his plans to rejuvenate his
 THE BLACK MOON 177

race back into life destroyed with the single

discovery of this appalling city.
“My dear poor Kee. Playing with life. One child
grown out of a human’s loins pitted against all this
and you think you have the answer. Poor foolish
Kee.”’
Tar beckoned to a pair of the battle robots
standing close behind him. They began their ad-
vance towards the threesome.
But it was not to be quite the way Tar had
planned it. He had known that they came. He had
known about the train and the drive to sabotage
the efforts on the Android side of the Wall. He
knew where they were at all times and the attempt
on the boy-child’s life had been a fake that he
thought might take Woo and her companions
back out of danger. He did not wish them harm
but the plan had not succeeded for he had not
reckoned on the power of a Mandroid mother’s
skill. Nevertheless he felt he held the last card in
the trick. But he was wrong in underestimating the
power of a human being.
_ Pinball spun around and fired a sharp blast
from his weapon. The heat seared through the
head of Tar and sent him reeling off the parapet to
his final death hundreds of meters down the cliff
edge. The second blast took the side of the first
battle robot’s shoulder, not stopping him but
severing the weapon arm that could do most
harm.
But the battle robots were true to their title,
swift and devastating, built for fighting in the
worst conditions and surviving. The second mon-
ster swerved across the ground and crashed
against the pillar where Pinball had hidden,
178 CABAL: Volume 2

knocking the whole structure sideways with his

massive bulk. The first, slightly damaged, made
its way sensibly towards the other two. Kee had
leveled the huge blaster that he had brought from
the train and fired a shot towards the head of the
robot. The blast seered off the top as the robot
ducked, quick as a flash. Little harm was done
and the attack continued in earnest.
Pinball jumped on the back of the attacking
robot nearest to him and put the muzzle of his
blaster to its neck, pressing the contact and
drilling a neat, large hole through the motor unit
that he guessed drove the power units. But to his ©
horror, nothing happened and something switched
to a reserve power unit. Pinball found himself
riding a bucking bronco that threw him around
like he was a sack of vegetables. He jumped clear
and backwards, firing as he went, then he turned
to see that the pillar that had been knocked by the
robot was. toppling. He rushed to it and with all
the mighty strength in his bionic arms he heaved it
in a different direction. The battle robot had not
yet turned and when he did he was not prepared
for what he encountered. The pillar caught him
across the shoulder-blades, knocking his battered
head backwards, crushing the steel spine and split-
ting the body in half.
‘One down, one to go,’’ Pinball yelled.
The other had hold of Woo under his arm and
was making off with her like a rapist in the night.
Pinball aimed his small blaster at the feet of the
retreating giant and fired a sweep. The heat of the
ray took off both feet and the whisking machine
crashed to the ground, letting his bundle of
Womandroid go as he went. Woo rolled and stood
 THE BLACK MOON 179

up, Kee leveled his heavy blaster and with a wide

arc of fire disintegrated the robot before it could
stumble to its knees. 2
**‘Now we must find the source of the admin-
istration. We must find it and take it over.”’
“Wow, you got ambitions man,’’ Pinball
laughed. ‘‘How the hell do you propose to take
over this place so easily?’’
**It isn’t going to be easy, but right now what-
ever controls all those space launches has got a lot
on its mind keeping everyone happy. If we can get
in there and shut them all off, the armada will be
blasted out of the heavens and never come back.
See?’’

**See nothing, what happens then, when the bad

guys see they can come back to this place and take
over... what do we do then?’’
“*We’ll overcome that one when it happens...
just you see.”’
**O.K. I see. . . come on then, master planner.””
Pinball moved behind Kee as he and Woo set off
towards the door where Tar must have emerged.
They traveled down in the elevator and reached a
floor where they could hear a hum of activity. Out
of the doors of the elevator and across a corridor
to look in upon a control center manned com-
pletely by Mandroids.
So this is where they: all come on their nights
off,’’ Pinball whispered.
_ “*Shhhh,”’ Kee said.
“You take it all so light-heartedly,’’ Woo com-
_ mented. ‘‘Yeah, well, something to do with British
courage, you know.”’
Woo did not answer, but continued to watch
- through the window.
 180 CABAL: Volume 2

‘‘Now, this is what we do,’’ Kee said, as they

ducked down behind the door.
A minute later, with the sound of their whis-
pering finished, but the clatter of control with-
in the admin. rooms still high-pitched, three
gunmen emerged through the door. Before anyone
inside could do a thing, the heat was literally on.
Three blasters fired across the line of telecontrol
units wrecking 90% of what helped the space
launches out there to keep in touch with base.
Most of the Mandroid and Android personnel
were dead or destroyed, and the guards that stood
along the walls had trouble in seeing what the hell
had happened behind all the yelling and smoke
and the explosions caused by the electrical shorts
in the units.
Pinball, Kee and Woo moved out of the room,
back into the elevator without waiting to see if
they had done enough. At the top of the building
they shot down into the other shaft and were run-
ning at 50 odd kilometers an hour through the
vaults before anyone could get to within firing
distance of them. The great train sat in the subway
system waiting. Tar had not troubled to remove it
or damage it because he never imagined that they
" would ever return to it.
Kee started up the motors and backed out of the
tunnel at full speed. Within thirty minutes of their
devastating attack they were gone.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ending

A few hours later the prism was buried again in

the sand a few meters from the house on Kee’s
estate. The three Mandroids were seated on the
veranda and it was night.
“‘They’ve moved your son out of the city.
-They’ve taken him to a remote spot in the moun-
tains on the other side of the planet. He’ll be safe
now.”’ Kee had been in touch with his Council
members in the city of Charybdis and had not
related anything of their adventure. He’d simply
instructed friends to see to the boy’s safety and
left it at that. The rest, he hoped, would sort itself
out.
*‘Do you really think that is all we have to do?”’
Pinball asked, very uncertain of the results of their
attack on the control center.

181
182 CABAL: Volume 2

‘I don’t know, but if it isn’t enough, then we

shall soon know all about it.’’
‘*It all seems far too simple, far too easy.’’ Pin-
ball looked up at the dimmed sky and saw a moon
appear far across the water. He hardly took it in,
knowing that Charybdis had no moon at all, the
idea of a moon somehow did not settle properly in
his mind at first and he listened as Kee spoke
without commenting.
‘‘Think about it Pinball. The Androids have set -
up an aggressive position. They are in a state of
siege with however many hundreds of other
worlds across space and time. They said so them- ~
selves. The success of that venture requires com-
plete efficiency. If that efficiency fails, then there
is a hole through which the aliens can move. Once
they move through it the Androids become vul-
nerable. Once they become vulnerable, they die.
The attacks will be made on their bases, their
rocket launchpads, their centers. The enemy will
hone in on the aggressors’ signals, the Androids
signals. When I spoke with the other Councillors I
made arrangements to have every radio source and
every light source on this side of the Wall shut
down. At this moment and for the next 66 hours
there is a complete curfew imposed on Charybdis.
The attacks will come on the other side of the Wall
and they will devastate everything, but because
this planet is so big and because the enemy will see
nothing nor will they hear anything, we should. . .
and I mean should . . . be safe. If we are not, then
we die too. But then if we had done nothing we
would have died, so we lose nothing.”’
‘*But won’t they want to take the planet over?’’
Woo asked.
 THE BLACK MOON 183

“They may, but I doubt it. Once they have

smashed everything over there I doubt they’ll want
to have the job of cleaning it all up. I should
imagine that they’ll be pleased simply to be free of
the attacks that the Androids had been making on
them. Most nations are peaceful, most of the time.
Most races of humans or other creatures want to
avoid outright war. They only fight when they are
attacked, or when there is some threat. Once the
threat is removed they go back and lick their
wounds, make good again. I hope.”’
**So do I,’’ Pinball said, emptily, still looking at
the moon. There was silence.
“IT thought . . .’’ Pinball began.
“‘What?’’ Woo turned towards him.
“TI thought there was no moon in orbit around
this planet.’’
**Oh, look . . . the Black Moon is out . . . look
Kee . . .”” Kee stood up and walked to the edge of
the veranda.
*“The Black Moon,’’ he said, almost silently.
**What is it? What is the Black Moon?’’ Pinball
asked.
“It is our moon. It remains in eclipse for nearly
_ the whole of the time. Its orbit is such that it
remains in the shadow of Charybdis all the time
. . . almost all the time. It comes out of eclipse
only once in every . . . how many years is it Kee?”’
Kee stood in the darkness, the light of the moon
just beginning to glint on his body, as the moon
- came completely out of the shadows that had
engulfed it for the whole of Pinball’s stay on
Charybdis.
_. “T have never seen it and neither have other
_ generations before me. The Black Moon comes
184 ) CABAL: Volume 2

out of eclipse only once every four hundred years.

Its orbital path is almost exactly the right path to
keep it in our shadow the whole of the time, but
not quite. Every four hundred years, seven
months and three days or thereabouts it varies its
orbital path from our shadow and one of the suns
catches it from the other side of the planet.”’
‘‘There are superstitions on Earth that say
whenever the moon goes into eclipse any child
born on that night will have ill fortune,’’ Pinball
mused.
‘‘Here it is similar. The Mandroids say that
when the Black Moon comes out of eclipse it is”
good fortune, if there has been bad for the last
four hundred ape They say itscoming means a
change in events.’
“Well . . It seems to me you’ve had a bad
four jnindired years .. . perhaps.’’
‘‘Superstitious nonsense . . . we’ve had a bad
four thousand years.. .”’
Kee turned and went into the house, leaving
Pinball and Woo alone.
‘*~Do you remember what we did in the forest on ~
the other side OFthe Wall?’’ he asked her quietly.
‘*Of course.’
‘“‘Would you like to do it again?’’ Pinball
turned his bionic head towards her and she smiled
the Mandroid smile. They stood and took one
another’s hands, went into the house and up to the
old bedroom where Pinball had spent his first
night on Charybdis.

The moon still shone in through the bedroom win-

dow and all was quiet now in the house on the
beach. The light was silvery and clear and Pinball
d
 THE BLACK MOON 185

lay on his back beside Woo. There was no sleep,

of course; Mandroids have little need of sleep.
“I’ve been thinking,’’ he said, his voice so low
that Woo could only hear the slightest sound.
‘“Tell me,’’ she answered.
*“Well . . you remember my trip to Earth?’’
§*Ves,”’

**You remember that I had cancer and that I left

it there.’’
*“Ves.”’

*‘T was wondering just how much it might have

taken hold.’’
*‘That depends.”’
*‘On what?’’ He turned towards her.
*“On whether it could become as virulent in that
environment as it did here. Eventually it might die
out, who knows.’’
“Or eventually it might become part of the
genetic make-up, become hereditary like the can-
cer on Charybdis.”’
“Tt might.’’
“If that’s so. ..’’ Pinball said.
“‘Then, if that’s so, Earth will become like
Charybdis perhaps . . . the people of Earth, the
men and women, will become.. .’’
*“Mandroids.. .’’
‘“‘And we. . . if everything goes according to
Kee’s plan... will become...”’
_‘*Men and women again . . .’’ As Pinball
mouthed these words almost to himself the sky lit
up. A light far stronger than the moon could ever
have engendered, a light that could have come
only from a vast explosion, a series of vast ex-
plosions.
Pinball leaped out of bed and rushed to the win-
186 CABAL: Volume 2

dow, leaned out. The sky was bright red and

yellow and the light emanated from the other side
of the Wall.
‘*It’s happened,’’ he shouted as the sound of the
explosions began to filter through the air to them.
‘“Good God,’’ Woo said as she moved beside
him. The spectacle was astonishing and as they
watched, fresh explosions came as light and then
as sound.
‘*The attack is on.’’ They heard a faint sound
down below on the beach and looked to see Kee
standing there by the water’s edge, watching the
sight before them all.
*‘Do you think they’Il stop there?”’
‘*If what Kee says is correct . . . yes.”’
‘*And if it’s not?”’
‘‘Then we had better prepare to die.”’
‘‘Again.. .”? Woo said quietly.
‘‘Again, my love... and for the last time.”’
The light billowed above the Wall, radiating
high into the sky and flooding the.still cloud for-
mations that turned from black into clear colors,
changing the shape of the smoke and fumes that
shot up from the deluge.
‘“‘Won’t there be radioactive fallout?’’ Pinball
asked calmly, almost euphorically.
“Yes. It will not affect the Mandroids and the
children will go into shelters. You would not
imagine that there are shelters on Charybdis, but
there are. They were built hundreds of years ago
when they had a series of meteorite hails. No one
has been in them since, though they are sealed and
clean. Now the children will be going down into
them.’’
 THE BLACK MOON 187

‘*Strange how I feel about it all. Somehow, it’s

exciting, the light and the power. I feel like it’s
Christmas and there’s a warm fire and there’s
snow outside.’’
**T hope they don’t turn their guns on us,’’ Woo
said.
**I don’t think they will . . . somehow, I don’t
think so...’’
Suddenly the air around the house changed. A
strange, long, drawn-out sound rushed in from the
waters and the waves began to lift higher than
usual. The sound grew into a crescendo, whipped
up, and burst across Kee’s feet below them. He
turned and looked up at them in their window.
“The Storm .. .’’ he shouted. ‘‘The storm’s
coming... . now we are safe for sure. . . now they
will not come here.. .”’
And the sounds of the storm gathered higher
and louder, growing in strength and rhythm,
bursting across the ground. Kee turned and rushed
back into the house. Woo pulled Pinball back in-
side and began shuttering the windows. The gusts
of air thrashed harder and they watched as the
smoke and light that rose above the Wall turned
away and withered with the strength of the gusts.
The storm would turn back the attack, but not too
early and not too late. The damage to the An-
droids’ control of their universe would now be
enough but the terrible turbulence that came
across the planet and extended out into the upper
atmosphere would make it impossible for the
unknown attackers to do more.
‘*Tt’ll keep them from coming here too,’’ Pin-
' ball said with delight.
plates runOey robes said:racked Me
‘storms?’’ They laughed and watched ‘the:.
grow and grow and blast and blast . . .
laughed and laughed . . . together, safe...
Xv
 CHAPTER TWELVE

A Cure for Cancer

Pinball was given charge of the work. It was to be

the biggest construction . . . or rather destruction
job he had ever organized and he delighted in the
opportunity to show off his skills as a planner,
now so well enhanced by his robotic brain.
They had chosen to use the train, much against
the wishes of the Council, but Kee, as the insti-
gator of the successful plan to do away with the
division of Charybdis, was allowed his say in the
matter of breaking the Wall.
It had not been altogether easy to get the train
- out of its housing under the ground and even more
_ difficult to bring it, intact, across the land to the
_ cityside.
The whole operation had been almost as great a
task as the plan that was about to be effected with
_ the train’s help. But after much grumbling and

189
190 CABAL: Volume 2

puffing the train was there, on specially con-

structed rails that ran from a point some three
hundred meters from the edge of the Wall to thir-
teen hundred meters away from it. Pinball stood
in the cab and sent his orders over the internal
Mandroid channels to those working Mandroids
and some of the remaining Androids now co-
opted for the task. Huge chains and bolted metal
hausers had been attached to the topmost stones
of the Great Wall of Charybdis. The task would
take them many weeks but Pinball relished having
something positive to do on the long and dark
nights now that the Black Moon had returned to-
its eclipse.
With a mighty roar of the atomic-powered
engines the train shunted away from the start
position, dragging the chains up to full torsion. It
took the train and the throbbing of the motors
strained against the load, pulling like a giant bull.
At first the wheels skidded on the tracks but
gradually there was some grinding movement of
the top two stones that were attached by concrete
and steel bolts, each eight meters thick into the
stone, buried by explosive charges several meters
in. The train began to make headway and the
stones actually shifted. The tension was tangible
as hordes of children and Mandroids watched the
effort nearby. An incredible wrench brought the
first stone out of its housing and then the second.
Then the train speeded up as the weight and ten-
sion became easier.
Then, with a terrific crash the stone plummeted :
to the ground, dropping three hundred meters
from its once-lofty perch. Pinball struggled to
control the speed of the train as it sped off with
 THE BLACK MOON 191

the stones attached. He touched off the control

unit that exploded the bolts that held the chains
and hausing to the stones and they blew free. The
train ground to a halt just where Kee stood waiting
with Woo.
“*T believe the term is Hooray . . .’’ Kee said.
**You’re dead right you old flintstone . . .’’ Pin-
ball shouted.
**You’ve got a long job ahead of you, my boy,’’
Kee said.
**And a pleasant one. . .’’ Pinball returned.
‘“We’ll see what you think when you get down
to the last fifty or sixty stones . . . hope you don’t
tire too soon . . .’” Kee waved as Pinball reversed
the massive train back to the start,, the chains
being wound in by the androids that had taken
them on to the hauling gear at the other end. Now
the task of blasting more bolts into more stones
and again more pulling would start, breaking a
great hole piece by piece into the Wall that had not
been breached for thousands of years. They had to
cut through five kilometers of solid stone, and
much of the task would be done by explosives but
weakening the top and front stones would give
_ greater purchase and keep the surrounding stones
‘more or less intact.
The Mandroids did not wish to destroy the
Great Wall, only to breach it and once again build
their world from two into one.

Woo returned to the city with Kee, leaving Pinball

_ ravaging the land. Huge numbers of Mandroids
had traveled through the now open tunnel under
_ the Wall, to examine the long lost and mysterious _
land to which they had always been unwilling to
192 CABAL: Volume 2

go. All they found was huge craters where the

atomic bombs had been dropped. Scatterings of
shattered debris, metal tanks from space launches
and a number of launches lying broken on the
ground was all they saw. The whole area of the
Android world was laid waste by the unknown at-
tackers and the storm that followed that night
wrought its own final attack, throwing the broken
administrative buildings off their shaky feet and
finishing off the job begun by Kee’s small sortie.
There was nothing there. Everything had to be
rebuilt, but no one had the slightest objection to
that. In fact most Mandroids looked forward to
claiming a territory which they had won without
raising a finger.
Only the children were kept out. Somehow, Pin-
ball felt, this was a sad truth, that the one creature
on Charybdis who most deserved a treat, the in-
nocent child, would never be permitted to go
there. —
The area beyond the Wall had been sealed off
by various force devices that would prevent the
cancer virus from traveling over the Wall,
keeping the new land pure and free from the
dreadful disease. Only Woo’s son would go there
and then those that became his offspring; those —
who did not have the cancer in their bodies or in
their genes, those who would provide the future
for the Mandroids as secure and human. .
Plans for schooling, play areas, homes and all —
the creature comforts were already blueprinted
and work would begin within days. Mandroids
and Androids would work alongside one another,
something unheard of, and many still felt un-
certain of the arrangement but mostly everything —
 THE BLACK MOON 193

objectionable about the plan was overshadowed

by the prospect of the new future, much discussed,
- now by the Council.
**They should build a statue to you Kee. . . and
to Pinball . . . especially to Pinball,’’ said Woo,
musing.
“I believe it is already done. . . come, they have
built something in commemoration of what we
did, I was told earlier today that it would be
available for our inspection.”’
*“How exciting, let’s go and have a look.’’
They went to a studio in the center of the city
of Charybdis and entered through the doors.
Standing under drapes at the far end of the room
was a huge edifice of some sort and Kee walked
-directly up to it, pulled at the drape, in the absence
of anyone else to do it, and down came the
covering. Underneath was an enormous effigy of
the three heroes and a child. Kee stood at the
back, a giant figure, grandly dressed in the rarely
worn robes of the Council of Charybdis, his hand
squarely placed on the shoulder of Pinball who
stood slightly shorter, but still at least ten meters
tall, below him, his arm in turn around Woo’s
_ shoulder, and in her arms fay the small child born
to them. The strange and disturbing element of the
statue was that the Mandroid sculptor had por-
trayed each character with such skill and not as
Mandroids, as they were now, but as humans, as
__ they had been then. Woo looked up at herself and
Pinball and in particular the child whom she had
__ never held in such a way in her arms and she felt
__ the human eye shed tears inside the casing.
_ “YT didn’t think they’d build it like that . . .’’ she
said.
194 CABAL: Volume 2

“‘Of course . . . no Mandroid can give birth to a

child, only the children do that . . . and, in any
event, this is to commemorate the future, not the
past and present.”’
‘“How did they get the likenesses so close?’’
‘““With video records of you and Pinball...
almost every moment of your time with Pinball as
humans was recorded, not just for this purpose
but . . . for history if you like. You will not be
forgotten, youtwo...’’
‘Neither will you.’’ She turned to Kee and put
one arm around his thick waist.
“‘Oh, nonsense, they’ll forget me as soon as I’m .-
Android.”’
‘‘They won’t be allowed to . . . don’t forget,
Androids aren’t banished any more. . . you’ll live
on... when they look up at that statue they’ll be
able to say . . . ‘they’re still around, bumbling
some place over on the other side of the Wall
where the Mandroids used to live’ . . . and they’d
come and See us in a thousand years’ time, still the
same, you and Pinball and me. . . and my boy
too.”’
‘‘What a horrible thought.’’ Kee suddenly
looked morose.
‘*‘Why? I don’t mind being looked at.”’
“‘No, not that, though it’s bad enough . . . the
idea of being around in a thousand years... I
cannot imagine what the hell I’ll find to do for :d
that long.’’
‘*I’m sure you'll find something . . . after all... :
Pinball and I are planning on a honeymoon you
know...”’
‘‘Where?’’ Kee asked, as they turned away from
the statue.
 THE BLACK MOON - 495
“On Earth or some other planet . . . Pinball
reckons to have found a space launch still intact
on the other side and he’s learning how to fly it.”’
‘*T wouldn’t go back to Earth if I were you...”’
““Why?”’

‘*J just wouldn’t.”’

They walked out of the chamber and headed
back to the beach.
SAY PALL
Sesh N
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cancer Kills

Four people dashed across the launch-pad, one

turning every few steps in a dance-like whirl, firing
a blaster as he faced the security guards that
chased them. His aim was as true as ever. He
picked off four of the guards in one turn and then
another two in the next. As a lifelong member of
the Cabal he knew how to use the weapon. His
name was Vandal and the others who ran with him
were Faction, Roatax and Weekold. They had sur-
vived the cancer but they had to get away quickly.
Vandal was not prone to the disease and felt no
signs of it and the others were just plain lucky.
They knew nothing of where Vandal planned to
take them. Vandal knew only that he was going to
get the hell out of there and he carried with him a
device that he brought when he first came to Earth
from far-off worlds, a small time travel pack. He

197
bh
198 CABAL: Volume 2

hoped and prayed as he dispersed the body of

another guard that the blasted thing would work
after so long.
He swore, too, that if ever he nee up with Pin-
ball he would take revenge. Revenge for the death
of a world he had become faintly fond of, a world
now reduced to almost complete disaster; dis-
sipated by a disease so virulent that people were
falling like flies from a ceiling, a veritable plague.
Easily fifty million deaths had occurred in the last
four months, fifty million people and more drop-
‘ping with every day.
That was a big price to pay for any man’s
freedom and a high crime to lay at a door. But he
laid it at Pinball’s door, though he knew little of
the true reasons. He knew that somehow the bald-
headed giant had stepped out of the present time-
scale and found a way across the dimensions to
another planet. Well he, Vandal, could do that too
and one day he would find Pinball and then he
would make him pay.
Whole areas of Earth were out of commission.
Most of the capitals had fallen to the disease first,
with London the first of the firsts. There were no
longer any facilities, no working power, no clean
drainage, no waste disposal, no radio or television
services, no hospitals able to cope, no doctors to
speak of. The streets were strewn with bodies, -
with children and adults alike, lying dead and
dying where they had fallen; unable to stand for
the pain of the cancer.
Early on it had been diagnosed as a form of
virus unknown on Earth, brought they knew not
how. Early on the doctors had worked like
maniacs to try and find antibodies that would
 THE BLACK MOON 199

work to stop the tremendously fast movement of

the disease but the deaths were too quick. People
would not live for more than a few hours
sometimes after they showed the first signs and
any attempt to isolate the virus and find
something that might kill it failed, because it at-
tacked all those who worked upon it like a
warrior. It was like a crazy vampire, passionately
hungry for life and blood, and panic soon set in,
all the useful people with technical knowhow
enough to fight it were either dead or running;
running when they could not hope to escape.
There was nowhere, nowhere it could not attack,
nowhere it could not kill.
Vandal jumped up the rampart that led to the
opening of the rocket housing and the others came
close after him. They opened the hatch and
climbed in. Within seconds Vandal was at the con-
trols and firing the first rockets, his practiced
hand sweeping the controls, the adrenaline '
flowing even in his alien body. As the first power
was released and he saw the remaining guards fall
back at the base of them, he breathed a huge sigh
of relief.
‘‘Thank God for that,’’ said Roatax as Vandal
_ fired the release button for take-off. The huge
rockets crashed into life and the launch began to
lift and thrust, the long nose pushing forward as
_ the thrust rockets lifted and pushed the great
_ machine forward and up. They were off, and all
he had to do now was make damn sure there were
screens that would protect them from any air at-
tacks or guns from the surface. But he needn’t
_ have worried.
No one on Earth had much time to worry about
 4

200 CABAL: Volume 2 |

a renegade rocketship. They shot up through the

air and approached the atmosphere break. In
about eight minutes he would need to set the —
rocket on its course out of orbit and towards the
moon. He planned to stop there and then make his
time travel machine work. He tried not to think
too much of what he would do if it failed him. Die
on the moon perhaps?
During the journey he took the time machine
out and tested it briefly. It appeared to work.
The landing was safe and fairly efficient and
_ without troubling to step onto the surface he took
out the time pack and set it to go on a journey,
sideways, through the channels of Earth’s neigh-
bors in the time-scales. He knew nothing of where _
they would arrive and he cared little. As long as
they could forget yet another chapter in their
journeyings through space and time, that was
enough. But still Vandal would remember one
thing . . . he would remember Pinball.

Earth lay dying. The last reports from those who ~

had managed some small form of isolation in
specially-built sealed dwellings, was talk of ex- —
periments with body units. These units were —
somewhat like mini-tanks into which the un-
fortunate victim would have to go and be sealed. _
There he would remain. Unfortunately thé one
problem was that the limbs would tend to weaken
as the robot-like container would do all the —
walking and traveling for the passenger, and so —
came the idea of bionic bodies. After all... limbs —
‘could now be replaced once defective and the can- —
cer usually struck first at the abdomen. If the ab- —
domen were removed and replaced by false organs—
 THE BLACK MOON 201

the cancer might be stopped. The laboratories had .

been experimenting with cybernetic materials for
some years now and it seemed likely that
something could be done for those who survived
the cancer. Within months of the Cabal’s escape
in time, it had begun. The scientists looked for a
name that would act to identify those humans who
had been converted from living into bionic
humans... they could not call them robots...
that was an insult. After all, most of them had
much of the body still intact. They were, on the
other hand, not entirely, or often, not even more
than half-human. The name that was settled for in
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 On the run from his enemies, Pinball is
rescued by the vision of a mesmerizing
young girl from a world of stark bionic
beauty, a world that sentences its
inhabitants to a strange, slow, dying...an
the /usty wrestler with a taste for nuns
finds himself in the only trap in the
universe from which not even The Cabal
can save him!

THE BLACK MOON

Second in the New Series about the
CABAL, the most dangerous
Supercriminals in the Universe.

TM

‘
i 71831°00225

ISBN
05194

O-425-O0519he
“AI